The Gravity of Love

In the 1980s Jim, who has long abused alcohol and pills, ends up at Beckomberga, the big psychiatric hospital on the edge of the Judarskogen woods in Stockholm, after trying to kill himself. Jackie, twelve, starts going there every day, and once her mother has gone off on a trip to the Black Sea, the wards are all she has. She gets to know Dr Edvard Winterson, who brings Jim and a handful of favoured patients to lavish nightly parties; Inger Vogel, balanced between composure and collapse; Sabina, with her necklace and her misery; and Paul, with whom she discovers that love is the true insanity. The novel is about trying to keep someone in the daylight who never really wanted to stay, and about the fear of falling and its pull.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

355 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Sweden, 1980s

First published

2014 by Albert Bonniers Förlag

Author's age

42 when first published

ISBN

9789100135096 (original)

9780857054760 (MacLehose Press, United Kingdom)

9780374619916 (FSG Originals, United States)