Lola Akinmade Åkerström, already established as a masterful storyteller through her acclaimed novels In Every Mirror She’s Black and Everything Is Not Enough, delivers her most ambitious work yet in Bitter Honey. This sweeping historical fiction spans four decades, weaving together the stories of Nancy and her daughter Tina across a canvas that stretches from 1970s Sweden to the glittering world of early 2000s Eurovision. What emerges is a profound meditation on identity, belonging, and the ways in which secrets passed between generations can both protect and destroy.
The Architecture of a Complex Narrative
Nancy’s Journey: From Dreams to Disillusionment
The novel’s opening sections, set in late 1970s Stockholm, showcase Åkerström’s ability to immerse readers in a specific time and place with remarkable authenticity. Nancy Ndow arrives in Sweden as a young scholarship student from Gambia, carrying dreams of becoming her country’s first female president. The author’s depiction of Nancy’s initial culture shock—her confusion over Swedish social customs, her struggle with the language, her navigation of racial dynamics in a predominantly white society—feels lived-in and genuine.
Nancy’s relationship with Lars Wikström, her anthropology professor, unfolds with the kind of gradual complexity that marks superior literary fiction. Åkerström skillfully reveals how their connection develops from academic mentorship to romantic entanglement, showing how power imbalances and cultural misunderstandings can poison even seemingly genuine affection. Lars’s expertise in Mandinka and Wolof, initially charming to Nancy, gradually reveals itself as part of a pattern of cultural appropriation and control that speaks to broader themes of exploitation.
The author’s portrayal of Nancy’s academic aspirations—her dreams of diplomatic service, her vision of returning to Gambia as an educated leader—gains poignancy as we watch these ambitions slowly eroded by circumstance and manipulation. The Nobel banquet scene, where Nancy dines with Prime Minister Olof Palme, represents the pinnacle of her social ascension before her gradual fall into domestic limitation.
Tina’s Coming-of-Age: Fame’s Hollow Crown
The sections following Tina’s Eurovision journey in 2006 provide a fascinating counterpoint to her mother’s story while exploring contemporary themes of celebrity, identity, and belonging. Åkerström’s insider knowledge of the entertainment industry—gleaned from her work as a travel photographer and cultural commentator—brings authenticity to Tina’s navigation of fame’s treacherous waters.
Tina’s relationship with Sebastian offers one of the novel’s most compelling emotional through-lines. Their connection, tested by fame, scandal, and Tina’s journey of self-discovery, feels authentic in its messiness and ultimate resilience. The author avoids the trap of creating perfect romantic resolution, instead showing how genuine love requires both partners to grow individually before they can truly support each other.
Masterful Character Development Across Generations
The Weight of Inherited Trauma
One of Bitter Honey‘s greatest strengths lies in its exploration of how trauma and secrets pass between generations. Nancy’s emotional detachment from Tina—rooted in her painful association between her daughter’s appearance and Lars’s betrayal—creates ripple effects that shape both women’s capacity for love and trust. Åkerström handles this delicate psychological territory with remarkable sensitivity, showing how protective mechanisms can become forms of emotional abuse.
The character of Leif Wikström deserves particular recognition as one of the novel’s most beautifully rendered figures. His sacrifice—agreeing to pose as the father of Lars’s children to protect both Nancy’s reputation and his own secrets—demonstrates the author’s ability to create complex moral situations without easy answers. Leif’s relationship with the children, his genuine love for Nancy, and his quiet heroism provide some of the novel’s most moving moments.
Supporting Characters That Breathe
In “Bitter Honey,” Åkerström populates her narrative with supporting characters who feel fully realized rather than merely functional. From Malik Barrow, Nancy’s first love whose removal from her life through Lars’s machinations proves devastating, to Darryl Walker and Kasha in Tina’s Los Angeles chapters, each character serves both plot function and thematic purpose.
The inclusion of historical figures like Olof Palme adds gravitas to Nancy’s story while grounding the narrative in specific historical moments. The author’s decision to have Nancy witness Palme’s assassination—and go into premature labor as a result—represents the kind of bold fictional choice that pays emotional dividends while serving the story’s themes about how public events intersect with private lives.
Structural Ambitions and Occasional Stumbles
The Challenge of Dual Timelines
While Bitter Honey‘s ambitious structure generally succeeds, certain transitions between time periods feel less seamless than others. The novel’s length—over 550 pages—sometimes works against narrative momentum, particularly in the middle sections where both Nancy’s and Tina’s stories bog down in repetitive emotional beats. Some readers may find the pacing uneven, with certain plot developments taking longer to unfold than seems necessary.
The Los Angeles sections, while offering insight into the music industry’s exploitative nature, occasionally feel less authentic than the Stockholm-based portions. Jonas Jonsson’s character, while serving important thematic functions, sometimes reads more as symbol than fully realized person, particularly in his relationship with Tina.
Cultural Authenticity and Historical Context
Sweden Through an Immigrant’s Eyes
Åkerström’s depiction of 1970s and 1980s Sweden through Nancy’s perspective offers valuable insights into the immigrant experience during this period. The author’s research into Sweden’s social and political landscape—from the Nobel Prize ceremony to the assassination of Olof Palme—provides historical weight to Nancy’s personal journey.
The novel’s exploration of Swedish cultural norms around conformity, emotional restraint, and social democracy creates a vivid backdrop for Nancy’s struggles with belonging. The contrast between Gambian warmth and Swedish reserve becomes not just cultural observation but psychological metaphor for the emotional distances that develop between characters.
The Eurovision Cultural Phenomenon
The author’s handling of Eurovision as both cultural spectacle and metaphor for European identity politics demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how popular culture reflects broader social tensions. Tina’s failure at Eurovision—her decision to perform an emotionally raw ballad rather than the expected pop spectacle—serves as perfect metaphor for the cost of authenticity in a world that demands performance.
Language, Style, and Literary Merit
Prose That Serves Story
Åkerström’s prose style in Bitter Honey represents a notable evolution from her previous works. The writing feels more confident and assured, with dialogue that captures both the formal register of academic discourse and the intimate rhythms of family conversation. Her handling of multiple languages—incorporating Swedish, Mandinka, and Wolof without alienating English-speaking readers—demonstrates sophisticated cultural awareness.
The author’s background as a travel writer serves her well in creating vivid sense of place, whether describing Stockholm’s archipelago, Los Angeles’s entertainment industry landscape, or the institutional settings of Nancy’s later life. These descriptive passages never feel extraneous but instead serve the emotional and thematic development of the story.
Thematic Depth and Contemporary Relevance
Identity, Belonging, and the Immigrant Experience
The novel’s exploration of what it means to belong—whether to a country, a culture, or a family—feels particularly relevant to contemporary discussions about immigration, identity, and cultural assimilation. Nancy’s journey from ambitious young scholar to isolated domestic worker speaks to the ways in which systemic barriers can derail even the most promising lives.
Tina’s struggles with her mixed heritage—her discomfort with her own appearance, her confusion about cultural identity, her relationship with both Swedish and Gambian aspects of her background—offer nuanced insight into the mixed-race experience that avoids both stereotypes and easy resolution.
The Cost of Dreams Deferred
Both Nancy’s and Tina’s stories explore what happens when dreams encounter reality’s constraints. Nancy’s presidential ambitions, derailed by romantic entanglement and systemic obstacles, find echo in Tina’s artistic aspirations, complicated by fame’s demands and personal trauma. The author suggests that dreams themselves aren’t the problem—it’s the systems and relationships that make their achievement impossible or hollow.
Critical Assessment and Minor Weaknesses
Ambitious Scope, Occasional Overreach
While Bitter Honey‘s ambitious scope generally serves its thematic purposes, certain plot elements feel somewhat contrived. The coincidence of Jonas’s ownership of one of Lars’s paintings, while thematically resonant, strains credibility. Similarly, some of the connections between past and present sometimes feel forced rather than organic.
The novel’s treatment of certain contemporary issues—particularly around celebrity culture and social media—occasionally feels superficial compared to its more nuanced handling of historical and cultural themes. The Los Angeles entertainment industry sections, while serving important plot functions, lack the lived-in authenticity of the Stockholm-based portions.
Comparative Context and Literary Significance
Building on Previous Works
Readers familiar with Åkerström’s previous novels will recognize her continued interest in themes of identity, belonging, and the immigrant experience, but Bitter Honey represents a significant expansion of scope and ambition. Where In Every Mirror She’s Black focused on contemporary Stockholm’s racial dynamics, this novel traces how those dynamics developed over decades of social change.
“Bitter Honey” invites comparison to other multigenerational immigrant narratives like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah or Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, but Åkerström brings her own perspective to familiar themes, particularly in her nuanced portrayal of Scandinavian society and culture.
Final Verdict: A Flawed but Powerful Achievement
Bitter Honey succeeds more often than it stumbles, offering readers a rich, complex narrative that rewards careful attention while providing the emotional satisfaction of a well-told family saga. Åkerström’s willingness to tackle difficult themes—racial identity, cultural appropriation, generational trauma, the cost of assimilation—without providing easy answers marks her as a novelist of considerable maturity and insight.
The novel’s exploration of mother-daughter relationships, complicated by secrets, cultural displacement, and competing dreams, feels both specific to the Swedish-Gambian experience and universal in its emotional truth. While the book’s length and occasional pacing issues may challenge some readers, those willing to invest in Nancy’s and Tina’s journey will find themselves rewarded with a story that lingers long after the final page.
For readers seeking literary fiction that combines historical sweep with intimate family drama, Bitter Honey offers a compelling blend of cultural insight and emotional depth. It stands as perhaps Åkerström’s most accomplished work to date, confirming her position as a vital voice in contemporary Nordic literature.