The summer of 1995 in the quiet Småland village of Figeholm is the kind of summer that only exists in memory; drenched in sun, endless and quietly electric. That is when 17-year-olds Fille and Jojje – two kindred spirits – cross paths through their mutual love for Bruce Springsteen.
They become friends. Best friends. Their friendship is immediate and deep, almost like a first love. Jojje, who knows everything there is to know about Bruce, becomes Fille’s guide into the world of music, and soon they are inseparable. Their days blur into nights filled with music and parties; but most of all they talk, talk and talk. Jojje pulls Fille out of his shell, while Fille offers Jojje the depth and intellectual conversations Jojje has been craving. Together the world is theirs. What neither of them realizes is that this summer will change everything – and that nothing will be the same, ever again.
The moment Fille meets Nella at the nuclear power plant where they all work, Fille and Jojje’s world begins to crumble. Nella is older than him. She is his first true love and an intoxicating glimpse into the world of grown-ups, that he’s previously only dreamed of. Their relationship is forbidden, not least because Nella seems to belong to someone else, someone dangerous. Fille doesn’t dare to tell Jojje about the relationship, and the friendship that once felt unbreakable starts to crack under the weight of secrecy. Fille’s feelings for Nella grow more by the day, but the deeper Fille falls, the more he has to hide.
Everything unravels when Fille, blinded by his love for Nella, becomes entangled in the planning of an armed robbery at the local bank where Jojje’s father is the manager. Though the robbers are swiftly apprehended, the stolen money is nowhere to be found. The robbery marks the beginning of the end, setting off a chain of irrevocable events that tears the bond between the two best friends to shreds. What was once an inseparable friendship plunges into betrayal, culminating years later in a violent reckoning between Jojje and Fille. One of them dies, and the other flees the country. Now, far away from where everything once begun, the time has come to uncover what really happened that fateful summer. But memory is a fragile thing. Who, if anyone, really carries the whole truth?
Blood Brothers is a razor sharp story of what it is like taking your first steps into adulthood in a tight-knit community and of how the strongest of friendships are formed. At the same time, it is also a fast-paced suspense novel about a robbery and the relationships that are put at risk when life-changing decisions are made. Written in the vein of authors such as Håkan Nesser and Christoffer Carlsson, Anton Berg masterfully captures the intensity of adolescence with rare precision, while the reader is constantly forced to ask themselves: are there really any truths, or is everything just fragments of our own perception?
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Reviews
“This is a very well-written story where the narrative technique makes the story move in a captivating rhythm, with several impressive details and a really clever twist at the end.”
– Kapprakt (SE)
“Anton Berg’s Blood Brothers is an enthralling novel about teenage friendship, a dark story about guilt and betrayal, a thrilling page-turner in the archipelago of the Småland region. […] Blood Brothers spans from 1995 to the present day. From the youthful friendship, over to a love that is difficult to handle, and then with great drama to the present day’s guilt and shame. And that’s when it hits: the suspense. That, which makes it impossible to stop reading, even in the middle of the night. That’s when the emotional novel about these teenage boys becomes a real page-turner. […] The result is both gripping and thrilling.”
– Barometern (SE)
“Blood Brothers is an intense and skillfully written novel about friendship and betrayal.”
– BTJ (SE)
“Blood Brothers is a very skillfully told story. […] Fantastic reading!”
– DAST Magasin (SE)
“Anton Berg’s Blood Brothers is an unusually clever suspense novel, but also a melancholic story about growing up. […] With time, an impressive (and not at all gory) mystery appears, unusually skillfully crafted. […] There are quite a few similarities [between Berg and Nesser], but Anton Berg has created his own story in his own tone. It’s reminiscent of Stephen King, who also spends such a long time portraying the main characters, that one forgets that something terrible is about to happen. When it does happen, you’ve had time to really get attached to the characters. […] Anton Berg has crammed Blood Brothers full, but it never feels overloaded or blatantly obvious. On the contrary, it’s a wistful, beautiful story about mankind’s misguided intentions and deeply human insights. And suspenseful, of course. After the final pages, it takes a while to recover.”
– Lotta Olsson (SE)