Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden review – darkly funny Swedish autofiction

In this bleak, bestselling coming-of-age debut, the author evokes life with the seven dads he had in seven yearsFor Mum (NB: not in a passive aggressive way)” reads the dedication at the beginning of this distinctive debut. It gives us a promising flavour of the voice with whom we’ll be spending the next 340 pages.The story begins with deceptive simplicity: “Once upon a time, I had seven dads in seven years. This is the story of those years.” The narrative has a section for each “dad”, charting Andrev’s tumultuous childhood and teens as his mother’s boyfriends come and go, all of them disappointing and disruptive, and several of them violent. The dads are named for their dominant trait in young Andrev’s eyes: so we get the Plant Magician, the Thief, the Murderer, the Artist, among others. Continue reading...

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