Carolina Setterwall was born in 1978 in Sala, Sweden. She studied Media and Communication in Uppsala, Stockholm and London and has worked within the music and publishing industries as an editor and writer. Setterwall lives in Stockholm with her son. Let's Hope for the Best is her first book.

carolinasetterwall.se

'I think the world should read it' LISA TADDEO, AUTHOR OF THREE WOMEN

A Guardian Book of the Year

After the unexpected death of her partner, Carolina Setterwall found herself bereft and rudderless at thirty-six, faced with the seemingly impossible task of raising her son alone.

In this remarkable Swedish memoir about grief and guilt, memory and intimacy, she explores the nature of bereavement itself - the difficulty of learning to live with the ones we love, and the trials of living without them.

'The most compelling book I've read in years' The Times

'It's impossible not to draw comparisons with Karl Ove Knausgaard. I absolutely loved it' Evening Standard

'Every spare, controlled sentence has the ring of truth. Gripping' Daily Mail

This book! Swedish, confessional, shockingly honest about desire, love, loss. I've read it twice now and can't stop thinking about Carolina. Utterly compulsive

Painfully clear-sighted, unsentimental . . . It's about grief in all its raw messiness

Brutally candid. The book's power lies in Setterwall's lacerating honesty. It's the most compelling book I've read in years

Quite simply one of the best bereavement memoirs I've read. It's impossible not to draw comparisons with Karl Ove Knausgaard, but there is a unique voice here, a style of disclosure all her own, incidentally beautifully translated. It's an emotional battering ram, I thought, and I absolutely loved it

Heart-wrenching and unsettling

Moving, tender . . . Depicts the obsessive interiority of grief

The kind of book that you'll never forget. It gets under your skin. It moves into the heart. The story is so vulnerable and direct that one cannot avoid caring for the people it is about, and to love them . . . I have never read a book that, so beautifully, puts into words how difficult it is to live without - but also to live with - the one you love. One of the best, most touching and most relevant books I've ever read

An electrifying read. A book that forces itself upon you, impossible to resist and difficult to pause

A rich, honest, and poignant portrayal of the many dimensions of grief

One of the best books I've ever read . . . You're drawn into her raw grief, anger, guilt, bitterness, fear and loss - all of it, without any filter . . . Real and alive

Breathtaking . . . Astoundingly well told

A magnificent reading experience

Honest and unvarnished . . . Setterwall writes about the many nuances of grief, but also about love, family life and expectations of life before and after tragedy