Astrid and Veronika

Two Swedish women forge an unlikely friendship full of walks, swimming, confidences, and emotional healing. Veronika, a young novelist, has recently returned from New Zealand after the tragic death of her boyfriend. Astrid, her neighbor, is an octogenarian and "town witch" with her own painful history. Most of the story is ably narrated by Patricia Conolly with a smooth British eloquence. Conolly and Olsson are a lovely combination for evoking the physical world of rural Sweden, with its snow, fog, and dazzling sunshine. Interspersed are chapters told by Astrid (Jill Tanner) and Veronika (Susan Lyons). The narrators are too much alike, though, especially Conolly and Tanner, and Lyons's New Zealand accent for Veronika's boyfriend is distinctly iffy. A.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

January 22, 2007
In Swedish novelist Olsson's somber debut, Veronika Bergman returns to Sweden after a childhood following her diplomat father around the world (her mother abandoned the family), and after publishing her first novel titled Single, One Way, No Luggage
. She rents a small house in a rural town to work on her second, but in solitude finds herself seized by feverish dreams and paralyzed by the "stillness" of the landscape and the memories of her recently dead fiancé. Reclusive septuagenarian Astrid Mattson, thought by the village to be a witch, takes an interest in Veronika, and the two strike up a friendship based on loss. Against the backdrop of the changing seasons and their small, plangent houses, the two women slowly tell each other their most closely guarded secrets (which concern their mothers and lovers), and venture, tentatively, out of the safety of their routines. Olsson has a clear feel for the emotional wellsprings of both characters, but can't convert her terse lyricism into a fully realized story.