After their mother's death, three brothers retreat to a lakeside cottage at Midsommar, though they find no comfort: two decades previously, a tragic accident occurred there that has forever altered their lives. The eldest brother, Nils, fled the family when he could; the youngest, Pierre, copes with having been bullied; and in-the-middle Benjamin, ever watchful amid the competition for parental love, now seems stuck in the past. There's a fuse here that's about to be lit. Best-selling author Schulman, co-host of Sweden's most popular podcast, makes his international debut with a book already sold to 30 countries.

Swedish brothers Nils, Benjamin, and Pierre convene to scatter their mother's ashes at the family's summer cabin, bringing back a flood of memories for Benjamin, Schulman's central character. Despite moments of closeness and comfort, the boys' parents were often cruel and neglectful. Sometimes, the parents' failings drew the boys closer, but one day Benjamin had an accident. A wall of shock and grief descended, after which the boys could no longer knit themselves together as a unit or lean on their parents. As adults, the brothers are disconnected, with Benjamin living a ghostlike existence. Already an international bestseller, Schulman's novel is extraordinary in its structure, covering the 24 hours leading up to the ash-scattering, with the timeline unfolding backwards in two-hour increments. Past and present collide as Benjamin's childhood memories, most of which relate painful events that reveal the parents' inattention or the brothers' growing distance from one another, break through. The day of the accident figures ever more prominently as incidents in the "count-back" coalesce into another terrible event. An entrancing, gripping read.

Author and TV journalist Schulman's searing if simplistic English-language debut follows three adult brothers as they wrestle with the legacy of a tragedy that upended their childhoods over 20 years earlier. After their mother's death from stomach cancer, Benjamin, Nils, and Pierre reunite to take her ashes to a cabin in rural Sweden where they often stayed as children. It is an emotionally fraught place for the boys: while their adventures there drew them close, it's laden with memories of their parents' fickle moods--their father, at turns doting and wrathful; their mother, loving and cruel. Benjamin, calm and observant, narrates, and attempts to hold together the mercurial and aloof Nils. Schulman teases out the story's central mystery slowly, alternating chapters between Benjamin's memories and the brothers' haphazard reunion. Schulman writes in an understated prose and has an intuitive feel for the subtleties of gesture and memory. While the conclusion's revelation of the incident that sundered the family feels a bit too clean, the author's skills with character development are undeniable. Schulman shows he has plenty of talent to burn. Agent: Astri von Arbin Ahlander, Ahlander Agency. (Oct.)

Three sons of alcoholic parents return to an idyllic setting of long-ago trauma. Fluidly translated from the Swedish by Willson-Broyles, this is Schulman's first U.S. publication. In a frame story anchoring the narrative, three brothers have convened, after a long absence, at their family cabin on a lake to scatter their mother's ashes. In the mind of protagonist Benjamin, the middle brother, events and memories spiral and circle in flashback upon flashback--it's a take-no-prisoners kind of nonlinearity. During childhood summers at the lake, Benjamin, his aloof older brother, Nils, and irascible younger brother, Pierre, get into various scrapes. "Mom and Dad," as they're always called, exercise minimal supervision between frequent "siestas" and extended cocktail hours, leaving the children to disappear for hours in the woods and nearly drown in the lake. Their parents' volatility and inconsistent care have fostered an awkward semi-estrangement among the adult siblings, which, at the water's edge, erupts into a brawl, with their mother's urn weaponized. Shocks escalate, from the boys' unthinking cruelty toward a fish to a disastrous family outing on Midsummer Eve to the heist of Mom's ashes from a crematory. All this may seem over-the-top, but Benjamin's meditative perspective lends gravitas to the proceedings. His memories hover over one incident he recoils from confronting, even questioning his own sanity to avoid it. A pivotal figure in the novel is the family dog, Molly, a bellwether of unease; she is anxious and seems to only trust Benjamin and Mom. The behavior of Mom in particular is portrayed as classic alcoholic personality disorder; but it slowly dawns on the reader that there is far more to it than that. A final truth emerges, forcing the reader to reevaluate all that has gone before. A novel of family dysfunction that veers into startling and original territory. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.