Description

In the summer of 1955, the Miramar boarding house near the Swedish resort town of Bostad was attacked by bees. Seventeen-year-old Veronica experiences her first love affair with the boarding house's young guest, the sculptor Boo, who in a burst of unfulfilled longing sculpts the honey thistle sculpture.

In the picture below the message I see a sculpture. It is standing on a wooden pallet, the base is wrapped in bubble wrap. It depicts a thistle on a straight stem. The bronze has turned green with time, but the thorns are still black as wet blades. The sculpture is smaller than I imagined it, but it is pretty. Inside yawns an empty space, presumably meant for the water. I look more closely at the picture. There's something about the spines that stick out while standing firmly attached to the seed box itself that makes my stomach clench. I don't know why.

In the summer of 2019, media star, love relationships expert, Ebba, is living the aftermath of the public scandal she was involved in and barely making ends meet by making up crossword puzzles. She travels to Bostad to write an article about long-marriages... but the 80-year-old woman she interviews wants to tell a different story, a story of lost youthful love. Love is a feeling that is with us throughout our lives. You can't refuse, you can't run away.

Two women from different generations, whose stories intertwine and cut through the era in the late twentieth - early twenty-first century. The action takes place in two timelines, before and now, with the details complementing each other. The plot tells of the simmering passions of youth as we see them many years later.