The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is Helen Grant's debut novel; her follow up, The Glass Demon , drops this month. I had to get The Vanishing through Interlibrary Loan because it is not available in county. It is a great book, was worth the wait, and I hope some library in county gets a copy sometime. Scratch that--I hope more that somebody gets The Glass Demon in county because I also want to read that and will have to wait six months before I can request it through ILL otherwise (hint, hint). The setting is small town Germany in 1999; the story is narrated by a girl many years after the events of the year she was ten years old. Pia is like any other girl in her small hometown until her grandmother explodes in flames at the family's Advent dinner due to granny's overzealous use of hair spray in close proximity to an open flame. After this happens the story of the ordeal in all its many false incarnations spreads like wildfire all over town and throu...
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