Oslo, Maine

February 1, 2021
It's hard to keep secrets in small towns, and Oslo, Maine, is one of the smallest. With its economy dominated by a dying paper mill, many folks, like Claude Roy, look to Maine's famous rural wildlife as a way to put food on the table. Road kill is a coveted commodity. For Claude, though, his surreptitious side-hustle trapping moose, squirrel, and anything else with fur and four feet operates outside the law, but it provides income necessary to keep his wife, Celine, in Jimmy Choo shoes. High-end high heels are only one of Celine's addictions, the others being a drug dependency and clandestine trysts with neighbor and failed musician, Jim Kimbrough. Both sex and shoes are Celine's way of coping with the fallout of the accident that left her son, Pierre, with a mysterious memory loss that is being slowly restored through violin lessons provided by Kimbrough's wife, Sandra. For all their furtiveness, the flawed but deeply relatable characters in Butler's second novel, following Pickle's Progress (2019), exude an authentic sense of humanity, making this a sure-fire recommendation for Fredrik Backman fans.

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