Journey to the End of the World by Henning Mankell

15 year old Joel Gustafson lives with his lumberjack father Samuel in the far north of Sweden, so far north that it snows on his graduation day in June.  Joel cooks for his father, his mother Mummy Jenny left when he was only a baby.   Samuel and Joel spend hours poring over world maps together dreaming of this time Joel will be old enough to leave school and sign on as a sailor, and they can sail away from the cold north together.  But then a letter for Samuel arrives telling him where Mummy Jenny is and the pair take an overnight train journey south to Stockholm to find her.  Joel's life begins to shift and change, Joel is coming of age, Samuel is ageing and the docks and the ships and sea are close at hand.

At first I found the writing in this story quite stilted and alien but by the end I was fully engaged.  Mankell's story of a boy stepping out into the world and the aching sadness of the narrative is slow burning but memorable.