I’m in Sweden with two women who probably shouldn’t trust one another

Tove Jansson is best known for her children’s books featuring the Moomins, which I loved when I was young. She was also, however, a writer for adults and I have already reviewed two of her books of short stories – see here. The True Deceiver is a novel for adults and was translated from Swedish by Thomas Teal. It’s a thin book and I have no idea when or how it joined my to-be-read list. The book is set in Sweden and it’s nice to find a Scandinavian book in English which is not a detective novel.

This book is beautifully written and takes place over a Swedish winter. Katya is a young woman who lives in a small village with her brother who has a learning disability. She doesn’t like the villagers and they don’t like her and she has particular problems with the local storekeeper who makes sexual advances to her. Anna is an older woman who lives outside the village and makes a living as an illustrator of books. Katya makes the decision that she and her brother would benefit from living in Anna’s house and she then does everything in her power to make Anna dependent on her and becomes part of her life in every way.

This is a book about two women who see the world in different ways. Anna is creative and trusts everyone and Katya is desperate and unscrupulous and tries to make Anna trust only her. As the book progresses you see the women change because of their interdependence – Katya admits what she’s done and attempts to make some things right again, and Anna loses her innocence but gains a truer vision for her work. Neither of them is particularly sympathetic as a character but the book as a whole is engaging and I enjoyed it.

This is not a book that I am going to keep so it’s off to Oxfam for my copy but I am glad that I have read it and will look out for more of this author’s adult fiction in the future.

Has anyone any other suggestions of books written about Sweden that are not detective fiction ? Leave me a comment if you have some recommendations or tell me what you think of Tove Jansson’s adult fiction if you have read it.