I just finished reading the last page of “Roxette – Den osannolika resan tur och retur” and to put it in short: go and buy it and read it!
With this said, let’s go a bit more into details.
One could say the book is split into two parts; the first one is about Roxette. The author Sven Lindström goes through Roxette’s journey since they started with “Neverending Love” and played the last concert of the 2011-2012 tour in Mexico in September last year. You will find some interesting information about what happened in the USA, the ups and downs in the relationship between Per and Marie, Marie’s illness and recovery and the celebrated amazing comeback that we had the honour and blessing to witness the past years.
And Sven does a great job showing the world what Roxette is about! Even though there was nothing really new for me in the book besides a couple of details or things that I had forgotten, Sven puts the story down in a very nice way, in a way that made me feel proud and happy of having joined this joyride back in ’89. I laughed, I cried, I felt happy, I was surprised while reading the book. The book is clearly targeted to those who don’t follow Roxette on FB or read news on fan websites but are interested enough in the band and want to know some details about Per and Marie and how it all happened. But it’s also a nice documentation for Roxers and it will surely make you remember many things and bring back very nice (and not so nice) memories. And even though I know the story very well, I more than once felt I didn’t want to stop reading, and that, for me, is what makes a difference in a book.
The last 100 pages are dedicated to Roxette fans, or Roxers as we all call ourselves. Sven met many fans during his trips to South America, Russia and Europe to see Roxette and he decided to publish 5 stories of 6 die-hard fans, as he called them in the interview we did with him last week (stay tuned!), from different parts of the world: Argentina, Russian, Germany, Brazil and Poland/Sweden. This is the part of the book that has raised more eyebrows the past weeks since the table of contents of the book was published online. People have been wondering why so much about fans and why those fans. I was also wondering if I would find it interesting at all and I didn’t read it straight away like the first part. But then reading through the stories I realised that I’ve been there and done that a couple of times too and I am sure you will find yourself in the stories to a certain extent, too. We are all.. magic friends!
The only down-side is that there were moments where I would have liked to go on reading about the stories and get more the details. And that, compared to “Att vara Per Gessle”, there are very few pictures on this one. But one can’t have it all and this doesn’t change my final conclusion.
And it all begins where it ends… just get it if you can and if you speak Swedish, it’s simply worth it! Let’s hope it gets translated into more languages so that it can reach much more of you and public in general.
You can get the book on Bokus, they deliver to 35 countries besides Sweden.
[Update September 22:] Patrícia also wrote a review, you can read it on FB.
english version please!!!!