L'Estate senza Ritorno by Viveca Sten

L'Estate senza Ritorno by Viveca Sten is a book published by Marsilio. Once I ended up this book I felt a great sadness.

Why?

It is changed from a certain time at this part the perception of the importance of life.
It is becoming too common, too excusable, too simple to kill someone for the simplest reason in this world.

It's the day of Solstice and in the locality of Sandhamn, Sweden, a lot of teenagers as it happens every June 21 decide to have some fun. But their fun is not after all so beauty. They drink too much and at the same time they abuse of drugs, without, at the end to being in grade to recognize where they are, who they are and why they are in company of a certain girl or a certain boy, or company, why they are sleeping in a certain place, forgetting the sequence of their life.

Sometimes perception of what it is good and what it is bad, and what it means to have some fun, (giving some limits just for remembering what it happened in the while, it wouldn't be bad), is relative and subjective as we will see.

The son of a business man, Victor is found killed.
Thomas Andreasson will follow this case.
He will try to understand who the killer is but the final result will be shocking and surely not the one imagined by him and the men of his pool.

The book at the same time focuses also on the importance of teen-agers and their relationships with parents and new companions like it happens with the love-story between Nora and Jonas. No one notices that Wilma the daughter of Jonas is upset because they're happy. Happiness happens but sometimes it is difficult to be digested in particular when there is a new companion for dad or mom.

Not only: revenge will be another powerful chapter that the book will treat and the possibility of killing the responsible of a murder. Too pain for thinking that the responsible will live when the other one is dead and his life interrupted forever.

Can revenge re-pays a dad or a family for the loss of a child? The answer is no and in this case is more bitter because of the shocking revelations revealed by Thomas for interrupt maybe another homicide...I

The end of the book says a lot in this sense: "There are no murderers nor victims, just a series of unfortunate events."

Is this true?

Yes, under many aspects yes and it is very sad, because no one of the people involved were mentally healthy, lucid, they were all drugged and plenty of alcohol in their body and they didn't just remember fragments of reality and moment spent with their friends. Teenagers involved in this crime story written wonderfully well, by Viveca Sten anyway are "guilty."
Too weak, too irresponsible, they deleted their own self, accepting for not losing their friends, to drug themselves, spending an insane life, ending up to be different people and generating wherever it was possible uncontrolled reactions and not just the day of the homicide.

But responsibility in this sense is also in the hands of parents, in particular when very wealthy as it is in this case.

It's not necessary to inundate children, in particular teenagers of a lot of money if good at school. Better some gifts or some words of appreciation.
It is too known that certain environments "experiences" more than other ones certain problems.

Sure, no one can thinks that the teenager rewarded with a lot of money because good at school can ending up to buying drug with that money, you think that he/she will save that money somewhere but sometimes it's better to be stingy and prudent.

Lack of lucidity is a violent passage in this book and it made me so sad.
No one more or less (I can't tell you everything) would have done what it did if mentally healthy.

Just few of these people knew exactly what they wanted and why they wanted that.

This one is a sad story of someone without control, and surrounded by people who lost their control as well.
But...Where and how we should stop all this violence? Life is very important.
It's the main question to me.

The portrait of these Swedish youngsters is terribly poor and discomforting and this book to me wants to launch also another strong message: the one of "a drugged teenager society." These teenagers have some fun time if drugged, if under effects of some pills, some drugs, or alcohol.
It says a lot about a society that we think it's wonderful, rich, but that hides horrible, horrible aspects: the research of great, toxic, chemical emotions for later understand the miserable condition of desperation in which these teenagers will fall once the effects of drugs and alcohol mixed together over.

Teenagers involved in drugs of every genre, including pills taken by their own parents, cocaine, cannabis, alcohol, stealing money to their parents, teenagers completely "disconnected" by the reality.
Their parents trust them because they remember that "having some fun" in a healthiest ways, projecting in their children their same ingenuous and still beauty old world, for later discovering with horror that their world is not the world where their children are growing up in and that this one is much much more complicated, difficult and dangerous.

Under many aspects it's a strong very sad book. More than a crime story, it's the sad story of youngsters lost because of their personal problems. Drugs and alcohol are powerful answers in particular if families are not united anymore and if there are problems at home.

But, it's not an excuse for descending in another hell.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori