Blog tour: The Divorce

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Divorce by Moa Herngren!

More about the book…

Together for more than thirty years, Bea and Niklas live a comfortable life in Stockholm. But one evening, following a trivial argument, Niklas disappears. Weeks pass before it emerges that he has met someone else. To Bea's horror, he insists they must divorce.

But is this divorce really coming out of the blue? Is the person who does the leaving always the one at fault? What emerges once you begin scratching the surface?

More about the author and translator…

Moa Herngren is a journalist, former editor-in-chief of Elle Magazine and a highly sought-after manuscript writer. She is also the co-creator and writer on Netflix hit- show Bonus Family.

Alice Menzies is a freelance translator based in London. Her translations include work by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Fredrik Backman, Tove Alsterdal and Jens Liljestrand.

My impressions…

Bea and Niklas. They bonded following the death of Jacob, her brother and his best friend. They got married. They had children. They have a comfortable life. They understand and love each other deeply.

Some of the above is true. Some is up for interpretation because what follows is that they have an argument about Niklas forgetting to book the ferry tickets they need to go on holiday and the next thing you know is that he’s asking for a divorce.

What happened there?

This novel is a clever and thought-provoking observation of human nature, of how – sometimes – things happen because you haven’t corrected a misunderstanding fast enough or because you didn’t know that you had a choice – or that you were allowed to make a different choice.

Told from their respective points of view, this is a dissection of a marriage. This scenario being one that my hyperactive imagination will always fear, it touched a few buttons at times, and I love it when I can’t help but keep talking about what I’m reading with anyone who’ll listen!

Beautifully translated from the Swedish, this is a book I won’t easily forget.

Three words to describe it. Addictive. Thought-provoking. Contemporary.

Do I like the cover? Yes, it’s visually striking.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, this is a debut novel, and I’m not familiar with her other work.

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