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Anita Brookner
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There are two threads to the novel - the present day one centres on Jean , photographer with an obsession about a multiple murder of two Norwegian immigrant women on an island of the New Hampshire coast in the 1870s. She is there with alcoholic poet husband (Thomas )and daughter, on board brother in law's boat with him and girlfriend (Adaline) to take research photos of the island. She becomes more and more to believe that Adaline is having an affair with Thomas.
The other thread is that of the Norwegians. The great voice of the novel is from this thread. It is Maren, the surviving sister. Her account of her early life in Norway, how she came to America, the life there with her husband and later as they are joined by her sister, her brother and his wife is a brilliant portrayal of just how hard a life fishing communities had in those days, especially surviving the terrible cold of NH island winters, the claustrophobia of several people living in a small house, unable to venture forth at all during those winter months.
Chilling! I definitely recommend this thriller.
It tells the story of Jean, a news photographer who sets out on a sailboat to a remote island off the coast of New Hampshire, accompanied by her husband, Thomas, their five year old daughter, Billie, her brother-in-law, Rich, and his girl friend of several months, Adaline. The purpose of her visit is to photograph the scene of a nineteenth century double murder that saw two Norwegian, immigrant women hacked to death, which murders were much ballyhooed at the time as the crime of the century.
While there, she discovers an uncatalogued translation of the personal journal of the ostensible lone, female eyewitness, Maren Hontvedt, who seemed to have survived the carnage. Written in a sombre and ruminative tone, the journal of Maren's life and of the events that led up to the carnage forms a core of the story. Maren's journal provides a framework for looking at the angst of Jean's present, which is haunted by passion, jealousy, and betrayal. It is through Maren's story that Jean herself comes to terms with her own personal tragedy.
Alternating between Jean's unravelling present and the secrets of the past, the book provides a compelling, absorbing and suspenseful narrative, keeping the reader in its thrall. The two juxtaposed dramas come together in a primal and tragic climax. Those who read this book will find themselves haunted by it.
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