3.5 stars. So much dysfunction and foreboding. But in lovely prose. The people in this story are broken and all their tensions are set against a Norwegian noir backdrop. The main characters are a a couple trying to cope in a damaged marriage as it plays out in the midst of a violent crime, the husband's writer's block, his infidelity, the wife's stress and resentments, a daughter's strangeness, and the depressed, then alcoholic, then demented mother and her odd caretaker. There is a lot of repetition in the prose and there is a lot of counting of things, perhaps in an attempt to account for things. The characters are frustrating because even when they acknowledge their flaws, they do nothing to fix them. Overall, I enjoyed it.