Siri is a successful restauranteur married to a narcissistic cheating husband who is completely blocked on the final novel of his trilogy, 'a hymn to everything that endures and everything that falls apart'. She is haunted by the long-ago death of her young brother, who drowned when she was in charge of him, and her mother was never quite the same. Now, the young woman she hired to watch her two children for the summer goes missing and the family must deal with her disappearance and their own interpersonal and individual struggles.

It sounds dark, but there is so much wit and lightness and humanity in this book. With sparse language and a looping chronology and great insight, Linn Ullman beautifully conveys the lives of this troubled family.

An strange mix of sentimentality and bitterness, The Cold Song reads easily, but has a thicker undertone. It's that bitter undertone that kept me reading and reading. "The Cold Song" is not a story about a murder, so much as it is a novel about the aftermath of a death. The book delves into the complex nature of a strained marriage, rather than the hype of murder, which sets it apart and makes it a great yet sober read.

This is a very odd book. It's not really a murder mystery, although there is a murder, and there is a hunt for a body. From almost the beginning, the whodunnit question has already been answered. The rest of the book is devoted to the circumstances surrounding the event and is told (again and again) from the perspectives of various characters in the book. It hops around in the timeline and at times was a bit confusing. Sadly, I found most of the characters to be rather unlikeable and unsympathetic and when I finished the book I was just left with a feeling of "....huh. Well that's over."

Ha sido un "sí pero no".
No terminaba de ser una novela de misterio ni tampoco una novela cotidiana aunque intentaba abarcar ambas.
El final ha sido decepcionante.

I won this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program. It did not influence my rating or review.

Overall this was a good read and held my attention. It was different than what I expected from reading the jacket description. I wasn't sure I was going to like the writing style as it bounced back/forth between present and past but once I got used to that, it wasn't a problem and was a fairly easy and quick read. In additions, since this was originally published in Norwegian and translated to English, I was please with how well the language and concepts were translated to English and retained their meaning and context. I've read other books written in another language and then translated to English where this was not the case.

The writing was solid and the characters had depth. While I could understand their actions and have empathy for them, I didn't particularly care for any of them. They each had their own issues which made me relate to them but also dislike them. The parents are so self-absorbed with their own issues, both present and past, that they don't see the issues going on with their children, especially Alma.

I was a bit disappointed in the ending. While there was closure for some events, there was much left unanswered as to the characters' future and their relationships with each other. After all the build up and development of the characters, their issues and dysfunctions, it seemed a bit rushed in the end. If you like a book that wraps up every detail of the characters future in a nice package with a bow at end of the book, you will be left wondering with this one.

For the most part, I enjoyed this book.

Written by a Norwegian author, it was a bit tough to get into at first. There are a lot of threads at the beginning that get tied up as the book goes along. Although there is a mystery in this book, it doesn't get solved in a satisfying way. This story is more about the other characters in the book and how they react to each other both before and after the murder.

DNF. I couldn't bring myself to like any of these characters and they began to drag on me so I would avoid reading this so I stopped. Maybe just me though

Outline for my eventual review:
- communication
- Irma?
- the Wasteland and A Small, Good Thing