Description
“…a remarkable new novel…[that] in some ways recalls “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” but because Maja narrates her own story, we come to know her more intimately than we do Lisbeth Salander… The story alternates between courtroom scenes and Maja’s richly detailed memories… The author, Malin Persson Giolito, carries us deep into the lives of these star-crossed lovers and the decadent society that shaped them… Giolito, who practiced law before she turned to fiction, writes with exceptional skill. She seems to know everything about Stockholm’s rich and the ways of teenage girls. Her story examines the corrosive effects of vast wealth. Even the novel’s title, “Quicksand,” suggests a world that will suck in, swallow and devour the unwary. Giolito always shows sympathy for Maja, who is variously brave, confused, self-destructive and beset by problems she doesn’t understand… always smart and engrossing. We race along to learn whether Maja’s lawyer can save her. Or whether, in fact, prison may be where she belongs. Giolito keeps us guessing a long time and the outcome, when it arrives, is just as it should be.” —The Washington Post
“Quicksand is a novel that begins like a parlor game gone awry: On its first page, a little cross section of contemporary Swedish society – a right-on homeroom teacher, a Ugandan foster child, a cashmere-clad blonde, a son of Middle Eastern immigrants – lies on the floor, splattered with blood, as if darkly satirizing the country’s self-image of civilized multiculturalism…What we’re reading here is not so much Maria’s unfiltered thoughts as her speech to an imaginary audience: Mostly we listen in as she tries to make sense of what happened, but she occasionally addresses us directly, speculating as to what assumptions we might make about her and what comfy delusions we may be harboring about ourselves. The voice is uneven, unpredictable in a way that feels characteristic of a teenager…the novel is structured as a courtroom procedural, yet it clearly has ambitions beyond that, addressing Sweden’s underlying economic and racial tensions…” — New York Times Book Review
QUICKSAND is an incisive courtroom thriller and a drama that raises questions about the nature of love, the disastrous side effects of guilt, and the function of justice.
A mass shooting has taken place at a prep school in Stockholm’s wealthiest suburb. Maja Norberg is eighteen years old and on trial for her involvement in the massacre where her boyfriend and best friend were killed. When the novel opens, Maja has spent nine excruciating months in jail awaiting trial. Now the time has come for her to enter the courtroom. But how did Maja, the good girl next door who was popular and excelled at school, become the most hated teenager in the country? What did Maja do? Or is it what she didn’t do that brought her here?