What A Time To Be Alive by Jenny Mustard: The Book That Made Me Think About Friendship, Growing Up & Finding Peace
There are books that entertain you for a few hours. And then there are books that make you stop somewhere in the middle of reading and think about your own life. Jenny Mustard's What A Time To Be Alive felt like the second kind for me. The book follows Sickan, a 21-year-old young woman who leaves her small town in southern Sweden to attend Stockholm University. She arrives with very little money, very little experience and, most importantly, very little experience of belonging. After a lonely childhood, Stockholm is supposed to be her fresh start. A chance to make friends. A chance to experience love. A chance to become the person she thinks she should have already been. And that is what makes this book so interesting. It isn't simply a story about romance or university life. It is about ...