Christine Falkenland

I had no idea what to expect from this slim novel. Flea picked it up at a sale somewhere almost ten years ago, and i’ve never even been close to picking it up. But it turned out to be an interesting, slightly disturbing read. It’s set on an island on the Swedish West coast about a hundred years ago. Rakel, a young woman with a bad limp since an accident, marries a much older man, the widower George. She soon realises he is nowhere near over his dead wife, and her everyday fills with little comparisons, small hurtful reminders of a love she’ll never know herself. The main reson for her being in the house is raising George’s young daughter Cornelia. She does, to her best abilites, and to her own surprise finds a love for the girl, and – finally- love in return. But when Cornelia falls in love with a lowly fisherman and moves out of the house, Rakel’s jealousy starts to eat her. And at the same time, reports from the mainland starts coming, saying that the dreaded spanish flu has arrived, killing blindly.

There’s a lot of what i like here. Crisp prose, stong sense of place, a certain eerieness. It’s really only the feeling that this book kind of goes exactly where you’d expect it to, that keeps me from giving it a higher rating.… (mais)