The Silver Road by Stina Jackson

          2.5 Stars

First things first, the translator has made a superb job of the translation from Swedish to English.  There is little clunky language use or strange sentence constructions throughout the whole novel - a minor miracle but one that really did improve the reading experience.

Unfortunately, I found little in the book to recommend it.  Things start of well enough as we are introduced to Lelle and his search for his daughter, Lina, who went missing from a local Bus stop 3 years ago.  During the sunlit Swedish Summer nights he traverses the old Silver Road of the title exploring all the little logging roads and isolated, abandoned dwellings in his quest to find her.  He has lost everything - his daughter, then his marriage and now he is becoming more and more estranged from the community.

We are also introduced to Meja and her disfunctional mother, Silje, who move to a remote forester's cabin when her mother meets Torbjorn online.  Initially I was confused as to whether her story was contemporaneous with Lelle's but it becomes apparent that it definitely is and they seem to have little that will bring the two story threads together.  We do get there in the end by very convoluted means - admittedly by that point I wasn't particularly invested in the book and had more or less figured out the who if not the why and how of Lina's disappearence.

A lot of the book seems to be spent following these two characters doing the same things - smoking cigarettes, wandering in the woods, making coffee and listening to their internal monologues of woe.  I hate to say it but it all began to get a bit boring and not even the introduction of the survivalist family living deep in the woods really brightened things up.

Considering all the build up to what happened to Lina, the recent disappearance of another blonde girl, Hannah and Meja's complete dissatisfaction with everything the denouement - when we finally get there - is all reached and over within around 50 pages.  It all becomes a rather harried dash to reach the end of the book and it doesn't really hold any twists or surprises.

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK SUPPLIED VIA THE PIGEONHOLE.