travel

In case you didn't know: Swedes are bipolar herring-munchers who live deep inside the forest in little red houses without indoor plumbing. The Swedish men always prefer to live with their mom until she dies - sometimes longer... In some cases though, in their mid-forties when they hit a mid-life crisis, they go to Thailand to buy a bride and bring home to the mosquito infested village. Swedes rarely say anything at all, if they do it is something shallow about the weather or expressing the urge to get stupid-drunk on moonshine. Swedes also hunt or collect everything they eat i.e. moose and lingonberries. Swedes are indeed primitive, but really harmless and fun to watch. This is the portrait Jennifer Olsson paints of Sweden.

The general problem with this book is that Olsson hasn't bothered to look outside the little village she resides in to get an idea of what life is like in the rest of Sweden, but she frequently makes statements like "Three out of four Swedes prefer moonshine, fermented herring and cloudberries over burgers, fries and a super-sized coke". The entire book gives a disturbingly distorted view of life in Sweden.

If I set out to replicate her mission from a Swedish perspective I would have to abandon my dysfunctional family in Sweden and move in with a salmon fishing guide in Alaska preferably in a native Indian territory. Then I would report to my fellow Swedes about the wildly exotic, "Americans" living in teepee's hunting buffalo on dirt bikes, making a living on revenues from tax-free cigarette sales and having wild parties in the chief's double-wide - and then claim that:" This is America and this is how Americans live and interact with each other!

Instead of dozens of anecdotes about all the "cute-but-weird-Swedes" and their habits it would have been nice to know more about the fishing, how your son reacted to this drastic change in environment and your friends responses. Now we are stuck with an overly ego-centric Bill Bryson-like burlesque but without the depth, irony and humor he masters.

I'm sorry to break it to you - but almost anyone can join a moose hunt if they ask politely and promise to shut up for the duration of the hunt.

Gunnar - a typical Swede

This book is a lovely memoir. It's honest, funny, poignant and filled with great details about life (and food!) in rural Sweden. It is also supremely optimistic--about the possibilities of love and the possibilities of rehabilitating a stream that had been damaged by years of logging abuse. This is a story about restoration, personal and environmental. A very enjoyable read.

Jennifer puts something for every reader in this delightful novel. She brings back memories of family time; both good and bad. She entices the reader into the challenge of starting life over again, under any circumstance. The aspect of fly fishing is generously covered throughout, but one doesn't have to be a fan to completely indulge the novel. Hats off to Jennifer and Lars.