"The book does a good job of being scary without being terrifying, but it gets the two jittery states just close enough that it really doesn’t make much difference." They discovered a wailing infant and the body of a woman who had been tied to a pole in the town square and stoned to death. I say “almost” because of the haunting and bizarre tableau that greeted the two police officers sent to investigate. Silvertjärn is a tiny village - little more than a hamlet - in rural Sweden whose population almost entirely vanished without warning in August 1959. THE LOST VILLAGE initially reminded me of THE RUINS by Scott Smith, though Sten’s novel eventually treads sure-footedly in another direction. If I were looking for a one-word description of the book, I would reflexively, though still quite accurately, use the term “creepy.” While THE LOST VILLAGE is Camilla Sten’s sophomore effort, it is the first of her novels to be published in the United States (thanks in part to a stellar translation by Alexandra Fleming) and is quite different from her debut in tone, plot and genre.
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