Still playing catchup - still lurgied alas. But the upside of time spent holed up with illness is if you're still able to read. And I have got some reading done in December and thus far in January I can tell you.
And this is a real bonus - a review book, from the "L" pile and one of my all time favourite authors.
From the Blurb:
Anders lost his six-year-old daughter on the island of Damarö. He turned his back and she was gone: vanished from the winter ice, as if by magic.
Two years later, Anders returns to the island to confront his despair. And slowly realises that Maja's disappearance is not the first unexplained tragedy to strike the islanders. Nor is everyone telling him all they know. Even his own grandmother, it seems, is keeping secrets.
Opening Lines:
Sea buckthorn. Three thousand years ago, Damarö was nothing but a large, flat rock sticking up out of the water, crowned by an erratic boulder the ice had left behind.
On a winter trip home to the island of Domarö, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse at Gåvasten.
And Maja disappears. Leaving not even a footprint in the snow.
Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to Domarö to confront his despair. He slowly realises that Maja’s disappearance is not the first inexplicable tragedy to strike the islanders. Nor is everyone telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets.
And what is it about the sea? There’s something very bad happening on Domarö. Something that involves the sea itself.