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(3.89/5)A horrible crime that happened decades ago still haunts the people who witnessed it even today. Most chapters are structured like interviews with people who had some connection to those past events, and we get to read only their side of the conversation in long, wandering monologues. Each person's memories and impressions are subjective, and slightly different. With each account the readers gradually add mismatched pieces to the puzzle in the hopes that a complete picture will be formed at the end.
In the afterword the author said she wanted to write a book that made the reader feel uneasy throughout, and she definitely succeeded. I was seduced by the mystery from the start and captivated by the series of unreliable narrators (from deducing who was speaking, to spotting the differences between the various accounts, I was kept on my toes throughout). The characters all felt very real, their voices different. Even after finishing the book I stayed in its world for a long time, and kept thinking about it.
Don't approach this as a straight mystery novel, with a clear setup and a clear solution. This book is more about the journey than the destination, and more about feelings and impressions than hard evidence.
Content warnings: murder (including children), suicide, animal death
This book started out strong and was great for reading with a book club due to the slow unveiling of clues, unreliable narrators, and conflicting stories. It was fun to dissect.
That said, I felt it went on just a bit too long and the ending wasn't too my taste.
The writing in here will fluctuate a lot in difficulty with some chapters being breezy, easy reads and others intentionally confusing. It's often not clear who is speaking at the start of any chapter and you have to figure it out from their speaking style and what they relay about the events. The book club was bilingual and it sounded like the English translation took this ambiguity out and simply noted who was speaking at the beginning of each chapter.
Vocabulary wise it has a scattering of unusual words, but it sticks to a pretty solid core of repeated words and themes so I don't think vocab will be a blocker for most.