I started off lukewarm on this Danish psychological novella but at the end, am wondering who I can entice to read this so we can discuss. May need to reread. An unreliable narrator who is a writer questions reality in the wake of her partner's death. Who shot or murdered Holland becomes almost immaterial. I can almost almost get Pia Juul's sly winks (this is not a standard detective crime thriller meta wink) but like the ample literary references, they're just a hair's breath from being pinned down. At times Bess in existential crisis is unrecognizable to herself and others dear/familiar to her undergo the same metamorphosis.  With the fjord as backdrop, this has an unmistakably Nordic feel with its attendant dark foreboding and isolation.

Translated from Danish by Martin Aitken.  Pia Juul is also a poet and writer of short stories, with deliberate word choices and a sparse writing style.

Quotes:
Labarnum. Lilac. Drizzle. I needed the rhythm of words to penetrate the headwind.

I never found that the words people say to each other revealed to any great extent what happened between them.