i had contacts in Sweden in the 80's and although I admired Sweden at the time more than Mr Brown his description rings true. I didn't find it grumpy, his views are probably tempered by his own experiences and I quite liked the fact that he avoids being polemical and can admit that sometimes he was wrong. I thought the book illustrated the fact that you don't know what you've got till its gone. What Sweden retains is wilderness, though I skipped the fishing. I've just come back from a visit to the south (Wallender and Millenium country, I wonder if he has read recent Swedish detective fiction) but next time we will go north. ( )

He didn't like small-town Sweden when it was socialist and he likes it even less when it's capitalist. Much of what he says about the countryside seems to apply to Finland too, particularly the culture of masculinity and being outdoors.

This book combines a personal memoir, including the tales of a keen fisherman, with an examination of the collapse of the dream of social democracy in Sweden. It has won the Orwell prize, which is awarded annually to what the judges deem to be the best example of a non-fiction book with a strong political element. What puzzled me is that Andrew Brown seemed to dislike in equal measure both his experience of 1970s and 1980s Sweden and its obsession with conformity and equality, and the more market based system that took its place from the early 1990s. That's fair enough, one doesn't have to take sides in battles between the two ends of the political spectrum. What was depressing was the apparent implication that things will be pretty grim whichever philosophy holds sway.

I know Mr Brown is himself a Librarything user and could well end-up reading these comments, if so I hope he will forgive me for saying that there was something of the "grumpy old man" about this book. He appears only to have been happy for a few years in the late 1980s when he was working for the Independent in its infancy and indeed its heyday.

I'd never really seen myself as one of life's great optimists but having read this, and having heard about John Gray's new book that dismisses progress as an illusion, I'm coming to the conclusion that in these troubled times I'd rather read something more cheerful. Of course, a book doesn't have to be upbeat to be good. This was an interesting read. Perhaps my lack of interest in fishing led me to miss its essential positive truth that it can be the simple pleasures that make life worthwhile whatever else may go wrong in the economy, in society or in our own family lives. ( )