I read Jenny Mustard’s debut, Okay Days, back in 2023. Unflashy, perceptive and absorbing, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable novel which made me happy to put up my hand when What a Time to be Alive popped up on NetGalley. A coming-of-age story, it follows Sickan who’s changed her name from Siv hoping to reinvent herself after moving to Stockholm.
If you didn’t behave like an ordinary person and dress in clothes that signalled sanity, you would be shunned. What I saw was, adults hate abnormality, just as much as children do.
Eighteen months into her course, Sickan’s still friendless and living in spartan student accommodation, still constantly anxious that her peers are laughing at her, when she catches the eye of Hanna, a very different sort of misfit who appears to cultivate slovenliness, seemingly impervious to what others think. An odd sort of friendship begins between these two until eventually Hanna invites Sickan to share the palatial, fin de siècle apartment she’s inherited. Sickan is from a very different background, provincial and frugal, her parents so absorbed in their work as academic researchers, she’s been left to raise herself with the help of her grandmother. Hanna is the richest person she’s met, apparently intent on annoying her mother as much as possible. Hanna draws Sickan into her circle of acquaintances rather than friends. She meets Abbe at a party and begins a relationship which pushes Hanna to the fringes of her life. Over the year or so the novel spans, Sickan learns how to be a lover and a friend, taking steps into an adult life that might be different from the one she’d thought she’d have.
I stare in the mirror and I know I am overthinking but merely knowing you are overthinking never helps, which makes that advice, stop overthinking things, really quite toothless because how?
Sickan tells us her story beginning with how she and Hanna came to know each other, punctuating her narrative with flashbacks to her childhood. She’s a child of benign neglect, loved by parents too caught up in their work to pay their daughter the attention needed to raise a child or to notice the bullying she’s subjected to by her schoolmates. Mustard uses the same understated, quietly witty style that worked so well in her debut, conveying Sickan’s painful awareness of her social ineptitude and her attempts to learn how to be with people with a tenderness that made me want to cheer her small triumphs and ache for her setbacks. The end is brilliantly done, neatly swerving cliché and illustrating how far she’s come. I ended my Okay Days review saying it wasn’t one to shout from the rooftops about which is probably true of this novel, too, but I think I’ve found one of those authors who can be relied upon to produce the goods, something to be more than pleased about. I’m looking forward to Mustard’s third outing.
Sceptre Books: London 9781399740876 304 pages Hardback (Read via NetGalley)
I hadn’t heard of this author before, but I do like the sound of this. I’m a fan of unflashy but steady creativity. Sometimes I appreciate that kind of author more than the high concept/super-stylised/uber-literary kind.
I know exactly what you mean. All singing, all dancing can be like eating too many chocolates.
I’d already reserved this at the library and apparently it’s my turn next. Looking forward to reading it.
Oh, that’s great. Hope you enjoy it.
That cover is so eye-catching! I like the sound of this.
I wasn’t entirely sure about that cover to begin with but it fits the novel very well.
I’m sitting on the couch between the two of you, of course I immediatley loved the idea of someone sitting with a book but, then, the fire? /shudders
Ha! It works for the novel, though.
Is Jenny Mustard Swedish as this book is set in Stockholm. Sounds like it would appeal to Sally Rooney readers.
She is, and I think it probably would. I’m glad to have come across her writing.
I googled her to see if she wrote in English rather than being translated and what a profile she has: lifestyle influencer, fashion blogger, YouTuber on minimalism – it’s extraordinary! Her books do sound appealing, I’m so impressed she finds the time to write!
I’m not sure I’d have read Okay Days if the publisher had pushed the fashion/lifestyle side of her career to the fore which is a lesson in overcoming your prejudices for me!
Sounds excellent, Susan; I think may be because of the bullying and slovenliness, this is giving me vibes of Meiko Kawakami’s Heaven (which I’m still too scared to read) but that this takes things further ino how life turns out makes it even more interesting.
It’s such a quiet, beautifully put together novel, Mallika. I’ve only read Ms Ice Sandwich which I enjoyed. Heaven sounds more challenging.
That might be the one to start with for Kawakami; I’m just not sure I’ll be able to handle the rawness in Heaven–I have read another book about bullying–also Japanese fic–but they used fantasy to mitigate the effect.