Linn Ullmann is an award winning author, journalist, and
literary critic. She has published four other novels in 33
languages, all of them critically acclaimed international
bestsellers: Before You Sleep, Stella Descending, Grace, and A
Blessed Child. Ullmann is a cofounder and former artistic
director of the international artist residency foundation of The
Bergman Estate on Fårö. She lives in Oslo with her husband and
children.
Barbara J. Haveland translates fiction, poetry, and drama by
leading Danish and Norwegian writers such as Peter Høeg, Ib
Michael, and Jan Kjærstad. Recent projects include new translations
of Ibsen’s The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, and A Doll’s House.
She lives in Denmark.
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2014
“Ullmann’s voice on the page is a lean, tough-minded thing,
scrubbed and scoured of sentimentality straight through to the
final, Carveresque pages, in which she pulls off an 11th- hour
radiance, a tonal shift from minor to major key. The novel’s charm
lies in these idiosyncratic glints, these glimmers of queer wit,
uncensored scorn or sudden, unstinting sympathy.” —New York Times
Book Review
"Ullmann is very good at evoking the peculiar, charged stasis of a
household in which mentally active and intellectually vital people
are resolutely failing to communicate with each other—the
loneliness of communality, in short. She is a very exact writer,
who is unsparing of her characters: a tonic, sharp, lyrical,
intelligent novelist who deserves to be better-known in
English." —The New Yorker Page-Turner Blog“Ullmann’s rural
Norway is an unfussy place, eloquent for its starkness, much like
the spare language she paints it with. Her stage is less about
physical place than mood and one’s place in the familial symmetry.
While much happens in this novel, the events feel secondary. The
prose is taut, yet the pace is languid as summer in that
before-the-storm tension…The real achievement of this novel is
Ullmann’s gift to imbue the tension of a thriller via the unease of
the mundane…Yes, a murder occurs, but The Cold Song is
more a mystery in the way most families tend to be mysteries unto
themselves.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Disturbingly tangled and riveting Norwegian fiction…Linn
Ullmann’s The Cold Song reads like a cross between a
psychological thriller and a grim fairy tale, the kind that takes
place in a big house haunted by angry parents, lonely children and
secrets ranging from the ordinary to the catastrophic.”
—More
"[A] dark, lyrical novel with a firecracker of a
beginning...Ullmann...is a forceful, exquisite talent."
—Oprah.com
"The fifth novel by an award-winning Norwegian author and critic
deserves to win her a much larger stateside
readership." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Intriguing...Ullmann teeters between dark comedy of manners and
genuine psychological thriller, but she consistently captures the
telling moments in everyday encounters, and writes seductively
complex characters." —Publishers Weekly
“A deeply moving story of troubled relationships and unsettled
memories.” —Booklist.com
“The Cold Song doesn't so much unfold as it revolves,
around the sudden disappearance of Milla, the young and beautiful
summer nanny hired to take care of Siri and Jon's two children. The
real ‘meat’ of the novel rests in its keen and unflinching exposure
of the inner lives of its characters, revealed in brief spurts
of narrative that shift back and forth in time. The result is
riveting.” —Bookpage
"Ullmann deftly slips beneath the skin of her characters, depicting
their wounds and worries in subtle gradations of tone and
texture. The Cold Song remains a captivating, hybrid
book." —SFGate.com
“In her latest heart-stopper, internationally bestselling author
Ullmann, (who lives in Oslo), combines a mysterious murder
with a razor-sharp eye for family relationships.” —Reader’s
Digest
“In The Cold Song, Linn Ullmann explores the events
surrounding a young woman’s murder in brief, haunting flashes that
imbue the intimacies and betrayals of family life with the brooding
magic of a Grimm’s fairy tale. This delicate, mesmerizing work
attests to Ullmann's vast storytelling powers.” —Jennifer Egan,
winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2010 National
Book Critics Circle Award
“The Cold Song is a wonderful book, like a family album made
by a photographer who really cares for his subjects….The book has
the light but also the weight of a Bergman film. It doesn't offer
easy solutions but still has a kind of healing power." —Peter
Stamm, finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2013
and author of We’re Flying and Seven
Years
“The Cold Song recounts the unfolding of a large tragedy that
has already happened—the mysterious disappearance of Milla, an
adolescent girl—while also showing the smaller tragedy of a
faltering marriage. Combining the tension of a whodunit with the
subtlety of a domestic drama, Ullmann’s riveting novel is measured,
impeccably observed, and utterly chilling.” —Rebecca Mead, author
of My Life in Middlemarch
"The Cold Song is a fluid, shape-shifting novel, a family saga
that turns into an erotically charged drama and then takes a darker
turn into the terrain of a murder mystery. Linn Ullmann is an
unusually talented and sympathetic writer, able to inhabit a wide
range of characters and bring them all vividly to life.” —Tom
Perrotta, author of Nine Inches: Stories and The
Leftovers
“Contrary to popular belief, a death is not merely an end but the
beginning of a story. The death in The Cold Song opens a
Pandora’s box of human emotions, conflicts and deceptions. Readers
of this novel will be reminded of the joys and complexities of
living. Memories, laughter, gestures, trivialities—everything casts
a shadow, and nothing leaves us safe. Linn Ullmann has mastered the
art of seeing into the dark mysteries that make us who we
are.” —Yiyun Li, award-winning author of The
Vagrants and Kinder Than Solitude
“Linn Ullmann’s The Cold Song is a haunting novel
about all the ways we endeavor to love and be loved, and the many
mistakes we can make while trying. It's suspenseful and beautifully
written and so absorbing that I could not put it down. When
I finished reading it, I remained in a state of awe.” —Vendela
Vida, author of The Lovers and Let the Northern
Lights Erase Your Name
“[The Cold Song is] a psychological tour de force—not a beat
wrong. The ending crept up on me, so quiet and unexpected. It’s a
brilliant scene, with everybody locked in character—in
the huit clos finality of character—and it hits you the
minute you put the book down. I stayed up half last night finishing
it, and now I’m sitting bleary-eyed at my desk, paying for the
pleasure.” —Jane Kramer, author of Europeans and The
Politics of Memory
“The Cold Song is a superb psychological mystery and a must
for anyone who enjoys the genre. The writing is excellent. The
switches between the time of the murder, the discovery of the body,
and subsequent developments are many, but they fit together
seamlessly. Highly recommended.” —John A. Broussard, I Love A
Mystery
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