Rag Doll

Christine Falkenland

A young woman is found dead in an attic. First it is thought she committed suicide, but it turns out she is murdered. Among her belongings the police find something that seems to be a diary and the autopsy shows that she was pregnant when she died.

 

Ylva has gotten stuck in the waiting room of existence; her life in the city is complicated. She decides to run away and start over. She gets to rent the former personnel residence in the wing of a manor where she used to spend her childhood, but Ylva only gets started on her new life when the past catches up with her. Soon she finds herself in a destructive mess of erotic complications, where she is using others and being used.

 

In Rag Doll Christine Falkenland tells the story of the victim, rather than finding the answers on who killed her. The mystery is around Ylva: Who was she, the poet who returned to the small town where she grew up? Is the truth to be found in the diary left behind?

 

197 pages

 

Rights sold

Sweden: Wahlström & Widstrand

 

Reviews

” Whether you believe in eternal things or not, Christine Falkenland offers a temporary stay in the feeling of essentiality and unavoidability. Falkenland is one of the finest Swedish authors right now.”

Expressen

 

”Falkenland has an extraordinary exactness in her language, the absolute pitch of a poet, spellbinding /…/ the story about Ylva is like a stab right to your heart.”

 Sydsvenskan

 

”It is clear that Christine Falkenland is essentially a poet. Her naked language holds a clearness which takes us close to Ylva’s brokenness and precipice of self-contempt and guilt. Rag Doll is a strong portrait of a woman – sad, brutal and beautiful – and Christine Falkenland is a distinct voice among Swedish authors.”

Kristianstadsbladet

 

” Christine Falkenland is the psychological novel’s master in the younger Swedish prose.”

Norrbottenskuriren

 

”Images and characters from the poems comes back and develops in the novel, and it is as if the I we met in the poetry, now has the name Ylva and has begun to express herself in a clear beautiful prose.

Aftonbladet

 

”Rag Doll is in many ways a shunning novel.  It makes me very sad as I read it, but at the same time puzzled.”

GöteborgsPosten