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Carina Rydberg

'People need to get all the info they can on the maniacs cheering on this development.'

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The denizens at Flashback (who do more work in a day than all the 'journalists' of the Jackal Media do in a year) got Carina Rydberg in the radar. Rydberg's BFF with Anna Ardin and hates Mark Stephens.

'Check the plot of her screenplay for her movie Black Lucia', they write at Flashback.

The main character is Mikaela Holm, a high school student at Söder Latin who fancies her male Swedish teacher. When her class have to write an essay on a topic they choose themselves, Mikaela writes an erotic-dripping narrative obviously addressed to her teacher. Her teacher corrects the essay and gives Mikaela a good grade but does not otherwise comment on the essay.

Mikaela's obsession with her teacher waxes only more pathological over time. She starts spying on hm and discovers he's acting out her sexual fantasies with different women in a way that eerily follows the details in her own essay. Mikaela decides to write another essay and she sneaks the essay into her teacher's attaché. Soon afterward she discovers her teacher is acting out these fantasies as well - but of course with another woman.

Strange things start happening at the school. A cat Mikaela likes to play with is found by her and her friend Sandra with its throat cut in a cupboard in the biology lab. A stuffed embryo is found hanging in Mikaela's own locker and the rector sounds the alarm but he doesn't know that these actions are all directed at Mikaela. The only one of Mikaela's friends who knows about what she's written for her teacher is her neighbour Joakim, a charming boy who lives in Stocksund and himself fancies Mikaela. Together they try to figure out who's behind the strange happenings at the school.

Something terrible happens during the Lucia party that her friend Max hosts and Mikaela understands one of her closest friends is actually her enemy.

A Flashbacker wrote:

The woman clearly is paranoid and suffers from illusions of grandeur. This is a bit off topic but if people are following this internationally then they deserve all the info they can get about the maniacs cheering on this development.

But there's more. A lot more.

'I Take Medication to be Able to Write'

Carina Rydberg has given up looking for love in the bars

Carina Rydberg has left the bar. Now she hangs out at the stove and spends hours making stews. And writing thrillers people almost don't dare read.

She's 44 years old but looks 12 when she walks about with her spaniel in the wheat fields on the southern tip of Gotland. A skinny, skinny elf with long, long hair.

Carina Rydberg gets her calm and her suntan here every summer.

'I love this place. Nice people, wonderful beaches - a paradise', she says and watches when the puppy greets the dog of author Bim Clinell.

A Brutal Story

Things aren't really settled with the holidays this year. Her new book 'One Who Sharpens Wolves Teeth' is being published. A brutal story.

'I want it to be brutal. If I read a psychological thriller I want it to be nasty. I don't want to fall asleep on page 10.'

[Not all readers agreed. 'Ingrid' wrote that it was a 'mentally ill story - so dark, so dark to think someone finds something this terrible and wants to write about it. I threw it in the trash.' 'Matilda' wrote 'Terribly poor book, totally sick. One has to wonder about the author's mental health.' 'Eva' wrote 'The worst thing I've ever read. Sick and perverse! Can one be mentally healthy if one wants to write such a story? I couldn't even keep the book in my house!']

The book is far from her most grim.

'I love terrible stories. I've done that since I was a child. For me it was a way to deal with my environment, pretend to do all those terrible things, sooner or later it gets terrible for real.'

She's back into the 'twins theme' she's fallen in love with. Twisted up as well. The main characters are twins and siblings-in-law at the same time, they have different fathers.

'It's completely possible if you hurry up. Myself I've had ovulations only a few hours apart. It feels like small pricks.'

Different as a Child

Her breakthrough novel is ten years ago now. A novel where she bared her soul and identified the man who broke her heart. The new novel is no window seat into Carina. But the bullied girl is still there.

[Rydberg's explicit goal with her first novel was revenge. 'I don't hide the fact that there are certain people I want to hurt with this book.']

'I was different as a child. I had glasses, I stuttered, and I was poor in gym class. A key scene is from when I was 12 years old and we were playing 'spin the bottle'. One of the others said: 'anyone at all but not her'.

She's survived the feeling of always being dissed. It's not a brittle girl but a suntanned woman sitting opposite in the garden chair.

'I feel pretty normal. Not exaggeratedly happy but not unhappy either. Like most people. The only thing that can depress me is financial worries.'

Extreme Dips

Carina Rydberg checks her mood swings with 'happy pills'.

'I take medication to be able to write. My depressions are so deep that I can't get out of bed. I have to avoid these situations no matter the cost. I'll be taking medication off and on for the rest of my life.'

[Didn't she just say she's mostly happy and that only money gets her down?]

Why has she felt so bad?

'It's always been love affairs that triggered it. But not created it. I've had a depressive side since I was little that I've not been good at keeping an eye on. I've had setbacks but there's really nothing in my experience that motives these extreme mood swings.'

Are you looking for love?

'I'm not actively looking for love anymore. I did it for such a long time. I don't know... How do you do it? Love was very important until I was 35 years old. Then you realise you can't have everything in life. It'll have to do anyway. One's life is perhaps not ruined because of it.'

Do you love yourself?

'I've never not liked myself. Women often dislike themselves. We can say 'thank you and goodbye' to feminism as long as it that remains. Because that means we don't like each other either.'

Do you want children?

'It's too late to ask that. I'm 44. But I've never wanted to have children. Why have all those children, what's the point of it? A lot of women feel like that but they're not allowed to say it. One is regarded as strange in some way.'

Happy to Accept Awards

She lived twenty years of her life at the bar. Now she most enjoys her Finnish log cabin on Ingmarsö in the Stockholm archipelago.

'I live a withdrawn life and I like it. I spend time with friends and the dogs and I plant geraniums. I love to cook and don't mind standing over a stew for three hours. I couldn't cook for most of my life. I couldn't even boil an egg.'

Her ten-year stipend has run out but she hopes to get new grants and wouldn't mind an award or two.

'I haven't even been nominated for the August Award! It's not such a bad idea as it sells books but the big prize is from the Nordic Council. That's a real fucking good award. I'd be proud to accept it.'

Aha. So people surely wish Carina the best, hope her future is bright and that she's spared any further mental illness. But seriously: is she the right company for her good friend Anna Ardin? And should Carina Rydberg be calling Mark Stephens 'the solicitor from hell'? Probably not.

Good thing that stipend finally ran out.