Breathless

Lo's parents did not plan for her. They were not married and never loved each other. Lo is raised by her extended family in a ramshackle house they share in southern Sweden. She enjoys a sheltered, idyllic, safe childhood, but everything changes when, at six years old, she makes a new friend. Lukas is thirteen and came from Hungary with his father when he was five. He struggles at school and has no companions of his own age. A fire in a field brings them together, when Lukas helps the family contain the blaze, and the two become inseparable. But Lo's family are deeply suspicious of Lukas' motives for befriending such a young girl. The two are compelled to meet in secret, sleeping side by side in a shed by the lake every summer. For Lo's fifteenth birthday, Lukas buys a car to take her to the Tivoli pleasure gardens in Copenhagen. Her senses dulled by the rides and fairy lights and by having a little to drink, Lo falls early to sleep, and wakes to find their lives and friendship changed for ever. Breathless is a beautifully controlled, evocative novel of childhood and adolescence in 1960s Sweden. Anna Sward has chosen a challenging theme, and has succeeded in crafting a narrative of breathtaking accomplishment.