Life at Any Cost
Mid-1950s. Tomas has treated Maj and the teenage kids to a visit at Järvsöbaden’s Boarding House for Easter, a fancy place with a good kitchen. Maj should be happy, and as usual she will do her utmost to be outgoing and friendly with the other guests. If only she wasn’t so dizzy.
But when she splurges on a facial, and feels the beauty expert’s soft hands across her forehead, she can’t hold back tears. Middle age, Tomas’ struggle with the firm and sobriety, Lasse wasting his last year of school and Anita’s disappearance into the world of books and movies–it is all overwhelming her. Perhaps Maj senses that changes have been put in motion and that she doesn’t have any real power to influence them. As the 1950s turn into the modern 1960s, Maj’s sheltered life is more and more threatened and her ideal is becoming obsolete.
Life at Any Cost is the final book in the highly praised and popular trilogy about the housewife Maj in Örnsköldsvik. Kristina Sandberg gives an undeniable voice to a generation of women, who were essential for the development of the modern welfare state and for the course of history but rarely given a place in its depiction. And the personal, merciless portray of Maj is impossible to deny or forget.
Kristina Sandberg, born 1971, is a psychologist and author. She grew up in Sundsvall in the north of Sweden and currently lives in Stockholm. She made her literary debut in 1997 and is regarded as one of the most important contemporary Swedish writers. In 2008, Kristina Sandberg was awarded the Norrland Literature Society Prize, a…
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Sold to: Denmark, Netherlands: Nieuw Amsterdam, Poland: PrószynskiMid-1950s. Tomas has treated Maj and the teenage kids to a visit at Järvsöbaden’s Boarding House for Easter, a fancy place with a good kitchen. Maj should be happy, and as usual she will do her utmost to be outgoing and friendly with the other guests. If only she wasn’t so dizzy.
But when she splurges on a facial, and feels the beauty expert’s soft hands across her forehead, she can’t hold back tears. Middle age, Tomas’ struggle with the firm and sobriety, Lasse wasting his last year of school and Anita’s disappearance into the world of books and movies–it is all overwhelming her. Perhaps Maj senses that changes have been put in motion and that she doesn’t have any real power to influence them. As the 1950s turn into the modern 1960s, Maj’s sheltered life is more and more threatened and her ideal is becoming obsolete.
Life at Any Cost is the final book in the highly praised and popular trilogy about the housewife Maj in Örnsköldsvik. Kristina Sandberg gives an undeniable voice to a generation of women, who were essential for the development of the modern welfare state and for the course of history but rarely given a place in its depiction. And the personal, merciless portray of Maj is impossible to deny or forget.
Reviews
It is marvelous reading
I have already written that Kristina Sandberg has created, with her earlier books, a unique, marvelous housewife elegy. And it cannot be praised enough, for its amazing insights, its astuteness and its understanding. Maj’s world – a dirge that quietly fades away in the third novel. Sandberg provides a unique female perspective of a 20th century that went by with furious changes.”
Arbetarbladet
