The Horn Book Guide

OLDER FICTION

Nilsson, Per

Heart's Delight

155 pp. | Front | October, 2003 | Trade ISBN 1-886910-92-8 $$16.95

(1) YA Translated by Tara Chace. Like its emotionally fragile main character, this affecting, uniquely constructed Swedish novel about first love--and first heartbreak--puts up a pretense of detachment. The teenage narrator mentally replays details of his recent romance as if they were movie scenes. The relationship unfolds through a chain of short, cinematic chapters that flow smoothly back and forth between the giddy, head-over-heels phase of the near-past to the anguish of the present.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2004