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A feel-good story of an unconventional friendship between an old retired jazz musician and a young girl who is trying to find her place in the world.

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A feel-good story of an unconventional friendship between an old retired jazz musician and a young girl who is trying to find her place in the world. What can a bullied teenager learn from an old man spending his days in a retirement home? For a start, she´ll learn that it ain´t got a thing, if it ain´t got that swing...

Passing by a retirement home on her way from yet another awful day at school, she hears a familiar song playing through an open window. An old man is playing her musical idol Povel Ramel - a quirky jazz musician from the 1940s - and it sparks a new stage of her life. The man´s name is Alvar and just like Steffi, he has a huge interest in music.

Before long he starts telling her his story. In his youth, as the Second World War tore across Europe, he travelled to Stockholm. Young, innocent and quite naive, Alvar began his life in the big city, struggling to become a famous jazz musician. Or at least someone who was in a band. Or at the very least someone who could dance the jitterbug and talk to girls.

Intrigued and inspired by Alvar´s story, Steffi spends more and more time at the retirement home, learning about jazz and forgetting about school. She begins to realize that she doesn´t have to be the Steffi other people know; instead, as Alvar did, she can recreate herself through music.

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There is much naive charm to be found in this story of a young girl who finds both a new friend and the hope for a new life through her growing interest in jazz... this is a loving, quietly charming... portrayal of jazz as a music which salves the soul of a misfit, brings her friendship and a sense of camaraderie and connects the future with the past. Glasgow Sunday Herald

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Sara Lövestam, geboren 1980, arbeitet als freie Journalistin und unterrichtet Schwedisch für Ausländer. Sie gehört zu den vielversprechendsten Nachwuchsautorinnen ihres Heimatlandes und wurde bereits mehrfach ausgezeichnet.

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