Deep in their past lies a blind spot. And it leads only through a wormhole of pain. The cottage in the Swedish lake basin belongs to the hidden depths of childhood, where Nils, Benjamin, and Pierre used to go with their parents to welcome the summer solstice. Now, long grown-up brothers return with their mother's ashes to scatter them in the local waters according to her last wish, and even on the way there, they face the overwhelming atmosphere that drove them away from this idyllic landscape twenty years ago. From their conversations, arguments, and scuffles, it gradually becomes clear to what extent the family dynamics of that time were shaped by silent conflicts, antipathies, and obsessions, to which even a citizen of a prosperous Nordic country is not immune. The domineering father, anxious mother, their drinking outbursts, and the cold upbringing of their offspring, the consequences of which we perceive especially through the overly sensitive eyes of the middle son Benjamin, all share a common denominator repressed into a metaphorical blind spot of traumatizing memories. What led to the severing of the most tender bonds? An intense novelistic psychodrama, which ranks among the most significant Swedish books of recent years, delves into family tension in a retrospective manner reminiscent of a crab's approach. The claws of emotions grip the audience until a painful resolution strikes directly...
