A touching and humorous story of magic, loss, and first love
Author: Ellen Strömberg
Swedish original: Ingen början inget slut
Publisher: S&S, 2024
Number of pages: 221 pp.
Reading material: Swedish original, English sample, English synopsis
Benjamin is fourteen, and he’s having the worst summer ever. His best friend Olivia is away at a rock camp, and Dad has dragged him along on a field trip to the coast, where he and a team of archeologists are researching an excavation site. Dad thinks that the small findings and the stone-lined labyrinth they’re working on are intriguing artefacts, whereas Benjamin only sees dusty rocks.
To make things worse, he has nothing to do, no one to be with, and he misses Mom. It’s best not to think about her too much, as he is still adjusting to the fact that she’s gone forever.
One day Benjamin finally makes a friend, Tristan, but soon realises that something is off: why do the townspeople hate Tristan’s family so much? Why does Tristan sometimes act or speak as if he were from another time? Why does he act so strange around Dad’s excavation site, of all boring things? And what is the truth about the mysterious labyrinth?Mixing typical YA elements with Finnish folklore, No Beginning, No End is a moving story of adventure, growth, loss, magic, and first love told in Ellen Strömberg’s humorous style that shows how the people who love us never really leave us, even when the opposite seems true. With No Beginning, No End Ellen Strömberg returns to YA literature after the wonderful success of We’ll Just Ride Past, which won her the August Prize in 2022 and has already travelled to six territories.
“We have no beginning, and no end. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that neither do you humans. You are born and you die, you are born and you die, but you never really disappear completely”.
Also available:
We’ll Just Ride Past (2022)
Maggan–All Year Round (2020)
Itch (2019)
Chasing Water (2018)
About the author:
Ellen Strömberg