The Boy at the Door

Starred review from May 7, 2018
Set in Sandefjord, Norway, Dahl’s heartrending first novel focuses on Cecilia Wilborg, a well-to-do suburban wife seething with anger, frustration, and a long-hidden secret. One October evening, after her daughters’ swimming session, Cecilia finds herself willy-nilly caring for Tobias, a seven-year-old boy who was abandoned at the public pool. When she tries to take Tobias home, she discovers that the address he gives is an empty house. Cecilia’s fraught involvement with the boy soon leads to a dizzying downward spiral of alcohol, drugs, lying, and guilt. Her first-person narrative alternates with two other pain-filled stories, one revealed through the cathartic journal kept by Annika Lucasson—a viciously exploited drug addict who once tended to Tobias and knows Cecilia’s secret—and the other centered on the psychologically damaged Tobias. Their intersecting tales reveal ironic twists of fate en route to the bittersweet conclusion. Dahl savagely delineates the price of living in a society that insists women must try to be perfect wives and mothers and have successful careers, too, or they’ll be inevitably made to feel they’re never good enough. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Agency.

June 1, 2018
This absorbing and stunningly atmospheric debut was written while Dahl was living in coastal Sandefjord, the most affluent city in Norway, where the story is set. Winter is closing in, and all of Cecilia Wilborg's tastefully placed Missoni throws can't relieve the chill. Her carefully staged life is unraveling. She lives in a gorgeous home in a picture-perfect place with her handsome husband and two beautiful daughters, but she has a frightful secret, and the more challenging hiding it becomes, the more she drinks, takes pills, and lies. Annika Lucasson, by comparison, has had a sad life of addiction, betrayal, and violence; but things are coming together for her because she knows Cecilia's secret. The two women's lives collide when Cecilia ends up with temporary custody of an abandoned eight-year-old boy. This is about as noir as Scandinavian noir gets. None of the characters is especially likable, but the reader is drawn to them nonetheless, as each tells his or her own story in turn. A tangled web, masterfully constructed and certain to satisfy fans of the genre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)