The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

Quotes

“Briskly entertaining . . . I was reminded more than once of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News . . . combines a distinctive northerly setting with a cast of likable eccentrics . . . Rather than any creed or belief system, it is Sven’s various friendships, intense but understated, that sustain him and give his life an order and purpose.”—Ian McGuire, New York Times Book Review

“Transporting and wholly original . . . this modern-day Call of the Wild is funny, moving, and ceaselessly compelling.”—People (Book of the Week)

“Ceaselessly brilliant as an arctic sun, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven illuminates the very nature of human yearning and perseverance. In attempting to inhabit the uninhabitable, one man shows us that no place is inhospitable to the human heart, and in delivering this searing portrait, Nathaniel Ian Miller ascends to the firmament of today’s most exciting young novelists.”—Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son

“Surprisingly humorous, this heartwarming story reminds us that love can reach the iciest depths of our hearts, even in the most inhospitable locations.”—Kirby Beaton, Buzzfeed

“Captivating . . . Miller offers a marvelously detailed look at a way of life and a profession practiced in an extreme environment, and though purportedly based on a historical figure, the character’s colorfully rendered experiences are the stuff of powerful dramatic fiction.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Readers will love the beauty and depth of his story . . . A Swedish trapper relates his unique life with insights about friendship, hardship, and solitude.”—Kirkus (starred review)

“Miller’s prose is lit by sparks of Sven’s somber humor and descriptive elegance . . . Miller's characterization is exceptional and thoroughly engaging, as are the vividly portrayed island denizens . . . Miller has given [Sven] an imagined life told in his own words in this engrossing fictional memoir.”
 —Bethany Latham, Booklist (starred review)

“A stellar first novel . . .  So authentic in both detail and narrative voice that it’s easy to forget it’s not an actual memoir . . . A truly walloping tale of solitude and survival told in visceral detail, a combination of Miller’s wild imagination and his beautifully precise prose . . . Sven is an insightful yet comically ironic narrator, and there is often great excitement in his story, including ‘ice bear’ attacks, near starvation, Northern Lights, and the haunting sounds of calving glaciers . . . Miller imbues his novel with an unforgettable narrator who asks essential questions of human connection, a remarkable achievement for a novel ostensibly about solitude . . . Like the Arctic landscape itself, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is beautifully stark and unimaginably rich, a book that will long be remembered by its lucky readers.”—Alice Cary, BookPage (starred review)

“The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is pure delight. From the first page, I was transported to a world unlike any I’ve experienced or even read about—a bleak and unforgiving landscape where ice bears, subzero temperatures, and Sven’s own worst impulses conspire against him, where loneliness and terror coexist with his growing appreciation for the flinty beauty of life. Only in such a place, I came to understand, could such a solitary man—emotionally stunted, misanthropic, self-pitying, disfigured—discover the bonds of friendship, and find family in a ragtag band of misfits. This novel’s hard-won wisdom, droll humor, and offhanded insights about human nature will pierce you to the core.”—Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Exiles

“A kind of Odyssey, complete with dogs worthy of Argos and a few precious human companions, this spare and unusual novel plumbs the dark side of polar narratives. Sven, as mysterious to himself as he is to us, is an unforgettable character.”—Andrea Barrett, National Book Award–winning author of The Voyage of the Narwhal and Ship Fever