What a Time to Be Alive

A Novel

Jenny Mustard

A fresh, sensual coming of age story by a dazzlingly talented young novelist, for fans of Sally Rooney and Mieko Kawakami.

Some people move to the big city hoping to find themselves, but young Sickan Hermansson isn't leaving it up to chance.

Twenty-one, friendless, without money but not without hope, Sickan's arrival at Stockholm University represents a new start. Her lonely childhood in a small southern town has left her utterly unprepared for intimacy: for friends, for sex, for love even. But Sickan is determined to build a new version of herself from the ground up, to make up for lost time. To simply be normal.

Just as Sickan seems to be finding her first ever friends, in whose company she finally feels safe, she meets Abbe: beautiful, charming—and by some miracle he wants her too. Unlike Sickan, Abbe seems completely at ease in his own skin. A solid foundation then, on which to build a relationship? Maybe?

What A Time To Be Alive is a story of class, sex, loneliness, and the trials of young womanhood. But above all, it's a story of firsts: the first party you're actually invited to, the first moment you fall in love, the first time you betray a friend. The first time you ask yourself, how much of myself am I willing to sacrifice, to finally fit in?

Jenny Mustard is a Swedish novelist who lives in London. She has over 600,000 social media followers, and more than 50 million views on YouTube. Jenny and her work have featured in the Observer (London), the Independent, and Vogue. Her debut novel, Okay Days, was published in 2023, but What a Time to Be Alive is her first book to be published in America.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Early praise for What a Time to Be Alive:

"Playful and witty with her sharp prose, Mustard conveys a vivid sense of longing, and the difficulties of finding your place in the world.” Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Sould

"Fierce and heady—this intensely stylish novel captures the fever of youth.” Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of The Sleep Watcher

"Jenny writes about friendship, love, trauma and belonging in a way that’s tender and true.” Chloë Ashby, author of Second Self

"Jenny Mustard is that rare thing, a timeless writer, in that she writes intelligent, and elegant prose reminiscent of the power and grace of writers like Rachel Cusk and Raven Leilani.” Molly Aitken, author of Bright I Burn

"A beautifully plangent coming-of-age novel . . . written with an openness and a melancholy that frequently catches you off guard, and will go straight to your heart.” - Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days

"With a crisp sense of humor, Jenny Mustard explores the great themes of love, sex, friendship and freedom in a campus novel that for all its cool Swedish restraint is also suffused with a beguiling tenderness.” Niamh Mulvey, author of The Amendments

"A novel about innocence, curiosity, and discovery, full of the big and small questions of stepping into oneself.” Aysegul Savas, author of The Anthropologists

"Luminous and sharp, What a Time to Be Alive offers not only a dextrous recounting of a young woman's giddy, volatile journey in Stockholm but also an invitation for all of us to reconsider and rediscover our notions of self.” Yan Ge, author of Elsewhere

"Jenny Mustard has conveyed with subtlety, precision and wonderful follow-through a worldview and sensibility that is both original and recognizable. A coming-of-age without pretensions; What a Time to Be Alive offers a freshness, curiosity and authenticity that readers will want to emulate.” - Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Alternatives

"Fresh, compelling, and utterly original, this story kept surprising and delighting me.” Daisy Buchanan, author of Pity Party

"Tender and insightful on what it means to be young, to feel different, and to fall in love for the first time, What a Time to Be Alive is a finely wrought coming-of-age story—with a protagonist you'll want to hold very close to your heart.” - Holly Williams, author of The Start of Something

"What a Time to Be Alive is a beautifully observed story about the chaos, fear, and passion of youth. Told with deliciously sharp wit and styled to perfection by Jenny Mustard. Not a single line is wasted.” Scott Preston, author of The Borrowed Hills

"In What a Time to Be Alive, as in life, old questions are made new again. A fresh, tender, and resonant bildungsroman from the wonderfully large-hearted Jenny Mustard.” R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit