Incredible from the first line to the last and all the way through. ( )

Een 6-jarig Deens meisje groeit op een geïsoleerde boerderij op in een disfunctionele familie ( )

Focus**** NRC***** DS*****

Translated from the Danish, Ane Riel’s novel is a deeply disturbing, yet hypnotically engaging, story of family, of loss and of preserving memories. It would be unkind to give away any of the twists and turns of the plot, but the basic premise is this: Jens and Maria live on a tiny peninsula, keeping themselves apart from the rest of the world. Their daughter Liv dies when she is six years old; at least that’s what they tell the authorities, to stop the possibility of her being taken away. In ever increasing horror we witness the events unfold, mostly through the child’s viewpoint but also through the letters of the mother, so obese she is confined to her bed and having lost the ability to talk. It is only when the pub landlord Roald, having become suspicious and wondering who the child is, wanders onto the headland that we see though his eyes the true nightmare of the state of the cottage and its land. What unfolds then hurtles the book towards its end.

This is an unsettling, bruising book. I found myself at times almost reading through my fingers as the story moves towards its climax. And right up to the last sentence the book keeps its surprises coming. The metaphor of the resin tapped from the trees by Jens and his daughter becomes one of how we preserve memories, how we can literally capture time – in the same way that an old hourglass is stored horizontally so that time is stopped. I was reminded of two books as I was reading this: ‘Room’, with its focus on how we see a confined space through the eyes of a child; and ‘The Wasp Factory’, with its androgynous central character and troubling violence.

I suspect this book will live with me for a while – some scenes are genuinely disquieting. But it is gripping, and I cared about the characters. Liv’s mother writes in one of her letters: ‘I don’t know whether to call our life a fairy tale or a horror story. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. I hope that you can see the fairy tale.’ A really wonderful book.

(With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.) ( )

Denne historien kommer jeg ikke til å glemme med det første. For en ekkel, men så utrolig bra krim! ( )