"This book is beautiful, enchanting, miraculous, magical.



The writing is lovely. The characters are charming and real. The stories give an immersive look at the as-yet-otherwise-unknown-to-me experience of a Scandinavian summer that feels totally new, and simultaneously gives a look at a childhood summer that is so familiar and comfortable and nostalgic.

It's a dream. That's all.

Bottom line: I don't intend to let another summer go by without me reading this book during it.

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pre-review

saw this one coming from a mile away.

review to come / 5 stars

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currently-reading updates

have you ever picked up a book and instantly known it was exactly what you needed it to be?

huge 5 star energy from the first page"

"Doubtless all that can be said about this charming collection has been. I don't understand why it is called a novel - it's prose, it's longer than a short story, therefore it's a novel? In fact this is 22 small pieces contained and constrained by setting and character. Everybody will have the points in this book that stand out for them in some way. My bookmark has stayed here:

Here you come, headlong into a tight little group of people who have always lived together, who have the habit of moving around each other on land they know and own and understand, and every threat to what they're used to only makes them still more compact and self-assured. An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.

For a book like this to come to be available to a person like me, Englishly and stubbornly mono-lingual, requires some work. When the re-issue I read referred to the 'flawless' translation by Thomas Teal, I wondered who he is.

rest here:

"

"An utterly perfect novella for me. It’s so clever, all of it � the use of ekphrasis, the title, the nature of the painting, how they all play into each other � but absorbing and readable at the same time, never too smart for its own good. One of the closest things I have read to Nina Allan’s short fiction, somehow seeming to embody the spirit of her fractured novels: I’m thinking especially of Stardust/Ruby, of ‘Wreck of the Julia�, as well as ‘Four Abstracts� and Maggots. Reminded me of Aliya Whiteley too: the mystery of Skein Island ’s premise, the cyclical nature of Three Eight One. As a horror reader, a lover of strange stories, and someone who’s enjoyed Tuttle’s contributions to anthologies, it’s probably embarrassing that it’s taken an NYRB edition to turn me on to her work. Even worse, in the past I’ve been put off by the covers (the design for A Nest of Nightmares, for example, makes it look exactly like the type of horror I like least). My Death is a revelation: subtle, grounded, yet indisputably weird. I will certainly read more now. And I’ll read this again."