The novel JUNE 17th delves incisively into issues that effect humans at a vulnerable young age that fester into trauma in later life. The question that the author, Alex Schulman asks is: could your childhood still be controlling your life? The 251 pages contain a psychological labyrinth we cart around that has a decisive measure on our actions, judgment and behaviour in our lives. The novel pries open dark vaults, so suppressed, for years.
In Alex Schulman books heroes don’t save the day. It attributes the deep wounds and the silent treatment that shape the character of our protagonist in his vulnerable years, tracing the bonds between children and parents and how this perception has a reckoning with their past and also how sibling relationships bear so heavily on kids, turning one against the other, or simmering in a cauldron of spite, shame and hatred for eons, handed down through generations. Another important theme is the book’s exploration of how dangerous remembering this can be. Vidar’s life is slipping away as we witness how he faces losing his identity and reason for living.
But first, some backstory. A lonely schoolteacher in Stockholm, Sweden discovers the ability to make phone calls to the past- to his childhood summer home on June 17th, 1986, the day marking the central mystery of his tender years. So why is June 17th, 1986 pivotal? According to the schoolteacher, “I don’t know, something happened that day. Vidar is not himself. After an incident at the school where he teaches, he is suspended from the classroom. Angry, bereft and restless, he stumbles across the long-forgotten phone number of his family’s summer cottage. On a whim he dials it, and to his surprise, his father answers, despite the fact that he’s been dead for many years. With a simple call to an old number, a rabbit’s hole to the past, to that singular day, mysteriously opens. With each call, he’s only permitted one per day, Vidar discovers a connection to his family’s every move on that fateful day, which changed his life, though he cant remember why.
As the day slowly gives up its secrets, Vidar becomes obsessed with every revelation, while a constriction is acting like a vice on his present life. His mind tries to rationalise this impossible situation. He remembers the cruelty between his parents’ arguments in the garden, trying to understand why they are so cruel to each other. Trying to decipher without causing a problem itself, is a heavy burden. The author explores how a child’s world is shattered but seen from an adult’s perspective, we see an already unhappy boy with a toxic father who is emotionally bereft of kindness, circulating an invisible tension within the house. Children feel the emotions and currents without understanding why his mother is so unhappy. Children learn truths that no one can explain.
The young Vidar becomes an observer to take on the burdens of of his parents. Its a cerebarl journey that coalesces in Vidar, as an adult, an observer, invisibly alone. The author cleverly threads the twin themes, of the past and the present, a constriction of sorts, leaving the reader wishing that our protagonist will have a happy ending. Its not surprising that Vidar is not himself- suspended for allegedly violently assaulting a student, now the subject of a criminal investigation, while unhappy realities of his childhood rise to the surface. As Vidar crosses boundary after boundary, while the day from his childhood unfolds, tightening the tension in the story in the present.
JUNE 17th tells a devastating tale by one of Sweden’s pre-eminent writers on how the harsh realities of the past inform the fragility of the present. Alex Schulman is a bestselling author, journalist and co-host of Sweden’s most popular podcast. His first novel, The Survivors, made his international debut.
The plot and machinations make this novel an addictive, breathtaking journey through time, asking the reader: what shapes a human. It’s a brilliant story.
