"You can always turn around... but by then you might already have become someone else." Silje Ulstein's Reptile Memoirs is a dark, visceral novel of shame, trauma and secrets, told in two distinct timelines. In 2003, the living room is "heavy with smoke at five o'clock in the morning in Ålesund's coolest basement apartment" when three flatmates decide to get a baby python as a pet. In 2017, an 11-year-old girl goes missing from a local market after quarreling with her mother, the wife of a local politician. As the mysterious threads of each story begin to intertwine, readers must ponder questions of truth and personal identity, what ends justify their means and if it is possible ever to really start over. Ulstein's disturbing, thought-provoking debut is translated from the Norwegian by Alison McCullough.
A young woman in 2003 finds it easier to relate to her pet python than to other humans. The mother of the missing child in 2017 worries over her lack of maternal feeling. A 60-year-old detective assigned to the case struggles to outrun his own losses. Their first-person perspectives triangulate the events of each timeline, and chapters titled "Reptile Memoirs" offer the point of view of Nero, the python. Readers are made increasingly uncomfortable as this psychological thriller builds through evil acts and awful accidents to a crashing conclusion.
Enigmatic and intricate, this first novel will chill even the most hardened of Scandinavian noir fans with its considerations of human nature, self-determination and animal instinct. --Julia Kastner, librarian, teacher and blogger at pagesofjulia