Rachel Hore
Shadows on the Water
A Blessed Child
By Linn Ullmann (Translated by Sarah Death)
Picador 320pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
In winter, terrible storms batter the Baltic island of Hammersö, the setting for Linn Ullmann’s fourth novel. In summer it’s an idyllic holiday retreat where families like the Lovenstads return year after year, lured by its safe, small-community feel and the strange quality of the light on the water. It’s a place to store up wonderful childhood memories, one might think – but for Erika, Laura and Molly, the now grown-up daughters of Isak Lovenstad, the past throws troubling shadows.
Just for starters, Hammersö is where the half-sisters are first shocked into awareness of one another’s existence. Isak, a pioneering obstetrician, is a charismatic womaniser, divorced from his first wife (Erika’s mother), devoted to his second, Rosa (who was Laura’s), yet unable to resist the extra-marital fling that produced Molly.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers