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Troll: A Love Story, or “Not Before Sundown�� as the original title is (and every other translation sticks to but the American) is a fascinating sort of modern folklore/mythology/horror story about a guy who finds an injured young troll, brings it home and nutures it back to life with life changing consequences. Trolls are in the universe of this novel real but rare creatures in Northern Scandinavia, and our guy, Angel, spends the first days researching what a troll eats while trying to keep its present a secret from neighbors and lovers.

The story is told from the perspectives of various characters with each their intent and persona, varying in length, and sprinkled with articles, old sagas and songs and news snippets about trolls. This narrative works extremely well for me, it’s one of my favorite ways of writing, and it worked really well with this type of story. A truly unique little gem.

I definitely want to read more by Johanna Sinisalo, sadly it seems only one other book of hers has been translated. Hopefully that’ll change.