PRECIS SOM ATT BÖRJA OM – JUST LIKE STARTING OVER

By Ninni Holmqvist

June, 1980. The grand house is being vacated. The Steinway is gone, the rooms are empty and hollow and the whole place smells like soap. Pia-Lisa is twenty-two years old and her childhood home is being put up for sale.

Ninni Holmqvist’s highly anticipated novel after the international breakthrough Enhet (Unit), starts off in the 1960s describing a childhood in rural Skåne, which is followed by the formative journey of a young adult in a more international world. It involves Beatles, Bowie and Springsteen, her mother and her flighty sister, Janne with the dog and Teresa whom she loves. It involves Robban and his complicated love life. And it involves her father, the famous pianist, and what really happened to her nanny Ulla.

First published by Norstedts, Sweden, 2014
518 pages

Sweden, Norstedts

… this is a novel that is enjoyable to reside in and that one regrets to leave once it is finished /… / ”Precis som att börja om” is a grand and generous novel that is very likeable.
Lennart Bromander, Arbetarbladet

Emancipation and liberalism does not exclude the lingering power of tradition. With ”Precis som att börja om”, Ninni Holmqvist has written a multi-faceted novel.
Jan Karlsson, Norrköpings Tidningar

I believe Ninni Holmqvist has loved writing this book and that makes it easy to love reading it. She takes it seriously and therefore I do too. Everything about it feels authentic.
Therese Eriksson, Svenska Dagbladet

Ninni Holmqvist has written a perfect reader’s novel that is a page-turner and that also makes one feel pretty shrewd as one figures out the central enigma at an early stage and that makes one draw a breath of relief at the end /… / I believe this could make an excellent movie.
Merete Mazzarella, Sydsvenskan

There is something poignant about the lack of technical finesse and the abundance of words, as if the novel would like to state that life, also in its most transparent and discharged shape, is interesting enough to be narrated in a sincere manner and sometimes with repetition.
Tim Andersson, Upsala Nya Tidning

”Precis som att börja om” is a both soothing and harmonizing novel – for better or worse.
Barbro Westling, Aftonbladet

 

 

 

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