The Café

A man and a woman meet in a support group for divorcees in Helsinki. They become friends and continue to meet regularly outside of the group, and they always meet in the same café.

Their lives differ from each other. She decided to go back to her husband after their marital crisis and has a son approaching adolescence. He is dating around but struggles with the grief of having been left by his wife and of the family he never had. 

Emotions waver back and forth between the pair: longing, attraction, belonging, a hope for love. However, they are friends. 

Or are they just friends? Every week the man and woman tell each other about their lives, share their dreams and their disappointments. 

The roles are intact. She is the entertainer and he is the listener, but the man also can’t resist telling us about the difficult things, sharing what is messy and broken. 

A man and a woman meet in a support group for divorcees in Helsinki. They become friends and continue to meet regularly outside of the group, and they always meet in the same café.

Their lives differ from each other. She decided to go back to her husband after their marital crisis and has a son approaching adolescence. He is dating around but struggles with the grief of having been left by his wife and of the family he never had. 

Emotions waver back and forth between the pair: longing, attraction, belonging, a hope for love. However, they are friends. 

Or are they just friends? Every week the man and woman tell each other about their lives, share their dreams and their disappointments. 

The roles are intact. She is the entertainer and he is the listener, but the man also can’t resist telling us about the difficult things, sharing what is messy and broken. 

info

  • Year of publication

    2023

  • Original title

    Kaféet

  • Page count

    200

  • Original publisher

    Förlaget M

  • Original language of publication

    Swedish

Reviews

  • Hufvudstadsbladet

    "Reading the first chapters of the novel is like sitting at the table next to them in the café, to listen to their conversation and for a little while lose yourself in it and maybe accidentally ignore a question that one's own company has asked."

  • Svenska YLE

    "The Café is a condensed relationship drama that bears features of both the romance and the feel-good genre, but beneath the warm, cuddly and humorous surface there are chilly undercurrents of darkness and mistrust that drive the story to a more unpredictable depth."

  • Åbo Underrättelser

    "[Torvalds] skilfully captures the fluctuations between closeness and distance, the meaning of the unsaid, and all the varied emotions that take place in the borderland between love and friendship."

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