Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2023
384 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An ingeniously plotted dark comedy by Noa Yedlin, "a master at tone" (Kirkus Reviews) about aging and friendship following a tight-knit circle of seniors as they attempt to hide the death of one of their best friends so he can win the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Avishay is up for the Nobel Prize for Economics. There's just one problem—he's dead. His four closest friends agree that the well-earned prize must stay within his grasp, and so conspire to conceal Avishay's corpse until the committee's announcement. The potential of a glorious legacy for their late friend – and by extension, for them all – is only a mere eight days away. What could go wrong?
Each member of the quartet has their own motive for the scheme. Zohara, Avishay's longtime secret lover, needs her widowhood acknowledged through an inheritance. Amos, a less successful academic than his late friend, is proving he can overcome his jealousy. Insecure magnate Yehuda needs the association to promote his own upcoming book. And Nili, a divorcee chafing against her grandmotherly expectations, thrills at the adventure.
Their plan starts out simple: turn up the AC, take shifts watching the apartment, forge texts and emails on the deceased's behalf. But as the days pass, they are confronted with surprise visitors, hidden motives, deep-seated resentments and the devices of nature herself. How far will this foursome go to help their friend die a winner?
Packed into a drama-filled week, bristling with insight and dark humor, Stockholm offers a refreshingly honest consideration of the age when we begin to measure the sum of our lives.
"Yedlin, a master at tone, grounds the antic comedy in reflections on aging, friendship, parenthood, life as 'one big effort to compensate for feelings of inferiority,' and 'sadness, more sadness, respectable sadness, unsatisfying sadness, mature sadness'…A seriously funny take on death and dying." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Readers will be amused by this literary variation on Weekend at Bernie's." —Publishers Weekly
"Ruminating on the power of lifelong friendship—and a little luck—this warm and witty novel is sure to appeal to fans of Zoe Fishman's Inheriting Edith (2016) and Daniel H. Turtel's The Family Morfawitz (2023)" —Booklist
"Hilarious, refreshing, tightly plotted and vividly written. An irresistible read."
—Jonas Jonasson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
"The portraits of these four friends are so vivid that as I read, I felt that Avishay's friends also became mine. Stockholm is unputdownable, full of intrigue, a bit of sadness, and a lot of humor." —Helene Tursten, internationally bestselling author of An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good
"Too funny, too sad, too real, and too preposterous, just like life. Noa Yedlin's Stockholm is the most entertaining book I've read in a long time." —Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Good Years
"Bright, witty, irreverent and compassionate, Noa Yedlin's best-selling novel Stockholm is an astute and hilarious study of the very building-blocks of the human condition: love, ambition, aging, friendship, envy and loyalty." —Ruby Namdar, author of The Ruined House and laureate of the Sapir Prize
"Noa Yedlin has a brilliant sense of Irony. In Stockholm you will find your friends' covert feelings and your closest family members' most secret thoughts – and it's going to be surprising, frightening, funny and liberating". —Dorit Rabinyan, author of All the Rivers
"Set against a backdrop of comedic errors, Stockholm is also a brilliant meditation on the intricacies of friendship, aging, ego, wounds and healing. Yedlin expertly peels back her complex characters' layers to reveal insights, dark and humorous alike, about what it is to be alive and mortal." —Parini Shroff, author of The Bandit Queens
This information about Stockholm was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Noa Yedlin is a bestselling Israeli author, the recipient of the Sapir Prize (the Israeli Man Booker) and the Prime Minister's Literature Award. Yedlin is also the creator of a prize-winning television series based on her bestselling novel Stockholm. Another of her bestselling novels, People Like Us, is currently being developed for television, and a stage adaption of her novel House Arrest is playing at Beit Lessin Theater in Tel Aviv, where she lives.
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