It is rare that a novel will deliver literal chills, but the twist in The Survivors was both superbly plotted and a complete and utter blind side. Bravo Schulman. Bravo. You have erupted onto the world stage with an outstanding debut novel.

Three brothers have returned to their childhood cottage to scatter their mother’s ashes and say their final farewell. Nils, the eldest brother, spent his life trying to escape the family. Benjamin, the middle child, is the beating heart, and Pierre, the youngest, is the most skittish of the family. Both parents are now gone, but the boys’ childhood memories still haunt them. Told in alternating chapters, the narrative shifts between their childhood and their return to the lakeside cottage as adults. Returning to this place dredges up the traumatic events from yesteryear, and this time the boys struggle to maintain control.

While the characters dialogue at times feels shallow, the description of setting and environment is exceptional. For anyone who grew up visiting or living in remote locations, this novel will awaken feelings of nostalgia and melancholy. It’s real. It’s vivid. It’s unnerving. The plot bounces between the past and present fairly flawlessly, but the real winner of this piece is the steady building of tension, which ultimately exhumes a masterful climax. It can be highly emotional at times, particularly for those readers who have experienced family trauma, but is well worth the cost of a packet of tissues.

A tragic and humbling story of family, love, loss, abuse, and isolation, The Survivors is a novel you won’t want to end, but I’m so glad it did. My heart couldn’t take much more.

Reviewed by Samuel Bernard Williams

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex Schulman (1976) was born in Skåne in the south of Sweden and grew up in the Stockholm suburb Farsta. He has had a successful career as a journalist, blogger, television and radio host, and has produced several stage performances. Since 2012, he runs Sweden’s most popular weekly podcast, Alex & Sigge, with several hundred thousand listeners every week.

Schulman made his literary debut in 2009 with Hurry to Love, which was dedicated to his deceased father, the journalist and television producer Allan Schulman. In 2011 he published his second book, To Be With Her, about his wife. His third book Forget Me, about his relationship to his alcoholic mother, was named Book of the Year in Sweden in 2017.

In November of 2018, his fourth book, Burn All My Letters, was published and became a runaway bestseller. Burn All My Letters has been unanimously praised by readers and critics alike, and it was featured on the prestigious critics’ list in Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter for five consecutive weeks.

With his fifth book and his first novel, The Survivors, published in 2020, Schulman made his big international debut. Sold to thirty-three countries and published to great critical acclaim around the world.