This book had an amazing soporific effect on me. I couldn’t read more than three pages without falling asleep. Does that mean it was boring? No, I think it means that I had a really busy week, never got to bed before 11:00 pm, and had no time to read during the day.
I even had that problem where you can’t remember what you read the night before. Each evening I would try to pick up where I left off previously, and invariably I’d have to back up and reread at least a page or two. Three pages forward, one page back, each night.
This book is simple and elegant. A girl is murdered. A few different men are suspected. Eventually, one of them turns out to have done it. The prose and the characters are calm and measured. So is the setting, which is rural Sweden. A chill is in the air, and it matches the chilly exteriors of the characters, and the cold precision of the police.
It doesn’t sound like I liked the book, but I did. There’s something kind of soothing about these Scandinavian mysteries, as long as they don’t get too violent, which this one certainly did not. And they leave you with a taste for more.
(Book 42, 2007)
Friday, September 28, 2007
1 comments:
Sounds like soothing might not have been right for such a sleepy week, despite it being good. :) I hope you manage to get more sleep soon!
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