SOMMAREN 1985 – THE SUMMER OF ’85
By John Ajvide Lindqvist
It was that summer. The summer of 1985. The Summer of Live Aid.
At idyllic Särsö in the Swedish archipelago a group of teenagers have been friends for as long as they can remember. Four boys and three girls. In the summer of 1985, all but one of them have turned 14 and the relationships are starting to shift.
In an attempt to impress the girls, the four boys get in a boat to go to the remote island Svärtan. Hidden away on a secluded beach they find something unbelivable: a siren. However, this creature has nothing to do with the delightful Disney-mermaids. It’s a beast with human features. When they find it, it is dying. Someone has tied it up and it can’t get down to the water. The boys decide to bring the creature with them. They keep in a water filled bathtub in an abandoned fishing shed. Very soon, it is starting to seem that the siren has a disruptive effect on the group. What is it actually capable of and why had someone left it to die?
The Summer of ‘85 is a story about finding one’s self in a group and who you are in relation to others. It’s about love and friendship during years that shape the future. And it’s a nostalgic trip to the 80’s and a siren’s song to the ghosts of long lost summers.
ABOUT THE BOOK
To be published by Ordfront, 2023
RIGHTS SOLD
Brazil, Alaude
Sweden, Ordfront
REVIEWS
The Summer of 85’ by John Ajvide Lindqvist is a novel that without hiding it, mixes Astrid Lindgren’s Seacrow Island and Stranger things (..) a book whose underlying trauma, and beautiful depiction of children who are on that vulnerable verge of adulthood, stays with you.
– BTJ
The Summer of 85’ is a solid novel, and one of John Ajvide Lindqivst’s best ones. [..] Still, the best part of the novel is strangely enough the storyline about addiction, about how incomprehensible it is that some get stuck in it and some don’t. About how the pleasure becomes so vital for some that they can not stop.
– Lotta Olsson, Dagens Nyheter
BOOKS
Fiction
