The Red Address Book

The Red Address Book is a quiet book, one that doesn't rush but rather takes its time and slowly, delicately infiltrates your heart.

Doris' red address book, evidence of a long and full life but increasingly filled with crossed-out names marked "dead", prompts her to write down the story of her life by concentrating of some of her most meaningful relationships. I really loved the juxtaposition between younger, energetic Doris and older Doris, struggling to come to terms with the gradual loss of her physical abilities and her independence. Doris really lived - sometimes making tough choices and sometimes having to deal with the result of other people's choices or external circumstances - but she learned to accept it all, the good and the show more bad, and make the most of it.

It was refreshing to read about an elderly protagonist who isn't the usual cantankerous old woman. Yes, Doris did have her moments of intolerance, but they were limited and justified by her frustration at finding herself deprived of her independence. The rest of the time, Doris was caring, funny and resourceful, even teaching herself how to use Skype in order to keep in touch with her family in the US. I also liked getting to know Jenny, Doris' grandniece and only remaining family, and really felt her pain at having to confront a loved one's mortality. I wasn't too keen on Allan at first and definitely felt like he could have explored more as a character and in his relationship with Doris.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect going in this book, but I ended up falling in love with Doris and having ALL the feels! I definitely choked up towards the end, and when I turned that last page it felt like saying goodbye to an old friend.

Overall, this is a bittersweet and charming read that will likely appeal to fans of family histories and quiet historical dramas.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way. show less

This novel shares a similar theme with another book I'm reading - Miss Austen by Gill Hornby - but I found Sofia Lundberg's story easier to get through. Sappy, yes, and also very soapy, but great characters.

Doris Alm, based on the author's aunt but solely by name and relation, I should imagine, is 96 years old and waiting to die alone in Stockholm. Her niece Jenny lives in America and they talk regularly by Skype, but Doris wants to pass on her memories and starts writing her memoirs for Jenny, based on the red address book of the title. Each chapter is headed by the name of a relative, friend or lover in Doris' life, amended with 'DEAD' when that person has passed on.

I found the premise intriguing, but the narrative soon descended show more into Hallmark movie territory. Doris loses her father at a young age, her mother hands her over to a rich socialite to earn her way as a maid, the socialite moves her to Paris where Doris' incredible beauty wins over a famous artist and she then becomes a 'living mannequin', before meeting the love of her life, a wealthy American. who abandons her just as war breaks out, so Doris and her younger sister flee to the States to try and locate her lover after he sends her a letter - but too late! And the drama only steps up a notch when Doris decides she wants to head home to Europe. I kept reading, but my credulity was stretched to the limit, even for romantic fiction.

On the other hand, Doris' relationship with her young niece Jenny - and even she has a traumatic story, with a drug-addled mother and a grandmother who died in childbirth - is heartwarming and comparatively realistic. I love that Jenny drops everything to fly to Stockholm and be with Doris in her last days, lugging a complacent toddler with her. And yes, I did well up at one point!

A quick, light read that could have done with dialling back on the dramatic cliches slightly. show less

Doris, 96, still lives on her own in Sweden, with the assistance of delivered meals and daily helper calls that clean and help her bathe. She visits with her only relative, her American grand-niece Jenny, via Skype. One day she decides that she’d like Jenny to know more about her past. Flipping through her address book, she finds most of the people in there crossed out with “dead” written beside them. How did she outlast them all? She begins to write her memoirs, meaning for Jenny to find them after she is gone.

But Doris has a fall, lands in a hospital, and Jenny flies to her side, bringing her baby with her. She finds Doris’s memoirs- losing her father at a young age, being sent to work as a maid at 13 by her addict mother, show more being taken to Paris by her employer, becoming a high fashion model, falling in love, losing her love, fleeing to America, and finding her way back to Stockholm- and is deeply touched. She’s most touched by the love of Doris’s life- what ever happened to him? It’s the biggest loose end in Doris’s adventurous life.

I liked the book; Doris’s life was very interesting although I did wonder at a couple of things, such as, why did she continue to leave her kid sister with their unstable mother, once she’d started earning good money? The end was lovely, but kind of predictable in a Hallmark Channel sort of way. The message in the story is live your life well; in the end, all you have are memories, good or bad. Four stars. show less

To this day my family laughs about my paternal grandmother's address book. It was a baffling document for anyone but her. She didn't list people alphabetically by last name. Well, she did for some. She didn't alphabetize them by first name. Although, again, she did for some. She listed them under whatever letter of the alphabet made sense to her. So her brother was listed under B for brother. Her sister was under S for sister. My father was listed under R for Ronnie with all of our myriad of addresses crossed out and rewritten over the years. Her haphazard system, one that only she understood, made telling the important people in her life that she had passed away a big challenge. We were so busy marveling at the way she filed everything show more that we didn't stop to consider who the people we didn't recognize might be, and we especially didn't wonder at the crossed out people. Who they were and who they were to her would probably have been an interesting and different perspective on her life. Sofia Lundberg's novel, The Red Address Book, is a book based on that premise, that entries in an address book can tell the story of the owner's life.

Doris is 96 years old and living alone in Stockholm. Care workers come in to help her periodically but they treat her as if she has regressed to childhood and have no interest in who she was in the past. She tolerates the workers but she lives for her weekly calls with her American great-niece Jenny, with whom she has never shared her past either. Jenny's life is busy and she can't find the time to visit her Aunt Doris until Doris falls and ends up in the hospital, slowly sinking. As Jenny faces her great-aunt's mortality, she finds it important to ask Doris about her past, to find out as much as she can about her beloved relative before she's gone and also about the things from Jenny's own past that she has never understood or known. In this she is aided by the red address book with so many of its entries crossed out and marked "DEAD."

Woven through Doris' current day story and triggered by the entries in the beloved red address book her father gave her as a young girl is the story of her complicated past. From her early childhood and work as a maid to working as a model, from the disappeared love of her life to the tragedy of their family, from what the war took from her to what it eventually gave back, and the choice she made to return to Stockholm in her later life, the entries of the address book span it all. It is both the story of her life and the people in it as well as a visual representation of what it looks like to have lost so many important people as she comes to the end of her life. While the premise is wonderful and the story of Doris' past is interesting enough, it is a little too simplistic and the current day story has stilted dialogue and unrealistic, predictable outcomes. This should have been incredibly heartwarming but there was something about it that missed the mark, not evoking the emotions it clearly meant to. It is unclear whether this is a translation problem or if it's a story problem. In the end, I wanted to feel more, to connect more, to like this so much more than I did, after all, I already appreciate the personal value of an address book. show less

After reading just the first twenty pages, I went back and read the thoughtful, beautiful words again. What a gentle and welcome lead-in to a unique tale of recreating a woman's memories through a well worn Red Address book given to her by her beloved father.

As the descriptions evolve of Doris shuffling, shaking, getting dizzy and eventually falling, readers are drawn in to her present personality as she transfers her Address Book memories into print for her distant niece. Doris' reactions to her own coming death and her unhappy stay in the hospital alternate with her joy and her regrets from her past in Paris and with her good friend, Gosta.

Unresolved are why she never sent money which she could well afford to spare to him when she show more knew he was trading paintings for milk and bread or to her sister and mother. Also, how could she just leave baby Elise with an aging woman as she went off to seek the inconstant man who claimed he loved her? Too many coincidences occur, making the story more magical than the reality it had been. show less

Doris Alm has lived a long and eventful life, from a poor childhood in Sweden, to modeling in Paris, to being a maid and companion to a frustrated artist. Doris has loved, and lost, and would probably agree with Tennyson that that's better than the alternative. But now she is concerned that when she dies, everything that has made up her life will die with her. So she determines to write about the people she knew and the things she did. She uses the red address book that her father gave her as a young girl as a prompt, as she looks through the pages and sees that nearly all of the names are crossed out and have the notation, "dead" written beside them. The story alternates between these reflections and her current life, home-bound, with show more her only connection to the outside world being the aides who come in to help her each day and her weekly Skype sessions with her only family, her great-niece Jenny who lives in San Francisco.

This story is lovely, heartbreaking, tragic, and hopeful, all at the same time. The writing is evocative, both the past and present sections, and beautifully translated by Alice Menzies. Although it's slow to get into, Doris's story will sweep the reader along after the first few (short) sections. show less

‘So many names pass by us in a lifetime.’

I’ll be honest, there were tears pouring down my face by the end of this one. Omg, it’s a heart-breaker, but also uplifting in its conclusion. 96-year-old Doris has kept her red address book since she was given it as a child by her father, and this book is about her writing her life story for her great-niece Jenny, putting on paper her memories so that they will live on. Her story is a remarkable one, from Sweden to Paris in the run up to the outbreak of the Second World War, fleeing to America, returning to Europe, being shipwrecked…. Yep, it’s a full and dramatic life, one that Jenny has no idea of and, as she ultimately visits Doris, she learns the whole story.

This is a book about show more lost love, and about living, and about accepting that life has as much pain and heartbreak as it is fun and laughter. The address book is filled with names crossed out as people die, and the book isn’t afraid to tackle head on the one inescapable fact of each and everyone one of us, that we all will die in the end. ‘Enough’ is the watchword for the book, as Doris’s mother tells her: ‘Enough joy to strengthen your soul, enough pain that you can appreciate life’s small moments of happiness.’ There are family secrets and the agony of wondering what happened to a lost love, Allan Smith, the memory of whom has haunted Doris almost her entire life. There is a subtle undertone of duality, of being neither one thing or another: Doris spends much of her life away from Sweden, Jenny lives in San Francisco but her memories of Sweden as a child are ones she does not want to lose, and Allan Smith is half-French and half-American. The sense of being uprooted, of not quite belonging, of absence, is a recurring theme.

As the book moves towards its inevitable conclusion, I was caught up in the emotion of it all. Yes, perhaps Doris’s life was a little too extraordinary to believe, and yes perhaps the ending (which I won’t spoil here) was a little too contrived, but this is one of those books that reaches in and wrenches your heart. It makes you look at your own life and your relationships with family and friends, and it might just make you wonder: did you love enough? So reach for your phone and call someone, tomorrow might be too late. A warming, heart-breaking tale, full of humanity and compassion and the struggles of loving. Definitely recommended.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest and unbiased review.) show less