YOU & YOU & YOU

Odd, almost morbid piece about several characters moving through life in a Swedish city. Un-talkative, low-affect Anon (named for abbreviated poet “Anonymous”) is tormented by his sixth-grade peers but doesn’t seem to care; he’s busy fantasizing about a girl he’s invented and the mostly-absent father he calls a “basement god.” Seventeen-year-old Zarah works at a daycare center (despite finding children disgusting) and revels in having sex with her violently possessive boyfriend. Twenty-year-old Nils obsesses over death to the point that he spends time inside a casket (at night in a funeral home) and buried underground (in the park, by a willing friend). The narrative voice reveals selected internal thoughts but never anyone’s full perspective, leaving readers on shaky ground for understanding—or liking—any particular character. By the end, only some questions are answered; things are a bit happier but the pall still hangs. Provocative but distant. (Fiction. YA)