Funny, sad, rebellious and unique about the almost symbiotic friendship between Mary and Lovely, two fifteen-year-olds who blow up their unbearable life and build their world on violent dreams, nail polish and stolen lyrics. Sanne Näsling’s novel dan ...
Funny, sad, rebellious and unique about the almost symbiotic friendship between Mary and Lovely, two fifteen-year-olds who blow up their unbearable life and build their world on violent dreams, nail polish and stolen lyrics. Sanne Näsling’s novel dances along in a flowered war uniform, and she writes with her very own language which beats like a heart through the text.
People at school say that Lovely is sick in the head. But Mary loves her more than anything else. To Mary and Lovely, life is a war against a sad existence. They are precociously intellectual and childishly playful. Together they know it is always better to die than to surrender to the repulsively normal. It’s only for those who give up that death becomes life-threatening.
The contrast between her gray existence, with Mom’s meaningless husband, Göran, and all the idiots in high school hell, and her brilliant life with the magnificent Lovely, cuts like a glimmering tear through Mary. And sometimes
the worlds collide in painful ways.
Press voices:
It has been a long time since I read a book that captured both the strength and the frailty of teenage girls’ friendships as precisely as debut writer Sanne Näslund’s “Capitulate Immediately or Die.”
Hanging out with Mary and Lovely is a rather wild but often very enjoyable experience. Their irreverent view of the daily life that most of us have to content with is contagious. But there is also a dark side and a vulnerability, subtle suggestions that something is very wrong, a threatening sense that this existence can not possibly last, no matter how intensely the girls wish it to.
In addition, the language in the novel is playful and unrestrained, and the story is written in a style that to one hundred percent matches the content; entirely on Lovely and Mary’s terms. In short, Sanne Näsling seems to have great respect for her characters. This is difficult to resist, and the girls will remain in my thoughts for some time, together with a longing for cherry red lipstick.
Hallandsposten, Camilla Jönsson
"The subject for Sanne Näslund’s debut novel “Capitulate Immediately or Die” is the friendship between two girls, Mary and Lovely. Mary, almost sixteen, is the narrator, and her account is entirely unlike traditional girls’ stories.
Though you will also find elements common to young adult literature - descriptions of teen parties with alcohol and idle sex, boring lessons at school and irritation over parental behavior, particularly over moms dragging new men home – this is where the similarities end.
Mary and Lovely are not your average girls. They are children and adults at the same time, they swing on a swing set while they drink beer. They vacillate between reality and dreams, and find themselves sometimes in the humdrum of everyday life in Stockholm, other times in a magical London. On all levels, this novel is a highly literary account which, above all else, distinguishes itself linguistically.
In their acrobatic word- and articulation games the girls humorously and astutely mix English and Swedish. They become queens superbly negotiating a linguistic world where no rules of grammar exist. Your associations will naturally take you to Diva and her alphabet in Monica Fagerholm’s novel."
Svenska Dagbladet, Lena Kåreland
"The dialogue is also sharp. The girls use a crushing laconic tone with which they dismiss guitar guys as well as teachers. I have not seen more cult phrases in one single book since Dorothy Parker. For example: “At the youth clinic, Lovely and I find a brochure about something called Chlamydia Day. ‘Okay,’ Lovely says, surprised. ‘Well, why not. I’m fucking tired of the National Day.’”
Dagens Nyheter, Kajsa Ekis Ekman
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