Frozen Music

‘Pride and Prejudice, Scandinavian style’
Express on Sunday

‘A deliciously descriptive novel … beneath its charm lie serious truths’
She

Her writing is dreamy yet dextrous … Like Conrad and Nabokov, she has conquered a language that is not her own’
The Observer

‘The writing stands out for its unusual twists of light, pacy prose and wry commentary… the evolution of two complex personalities and the unwinding of their deepest fears’
Books Magazine

‘My name is Esther Fisher and I’m just about to walk out on the only man I’ve ever loved. I’m thirty four and a latecomer to love, which makes this all the harder.’

What happens when your dearest dreams collide headlong with your principles? And what about when your best intentioned actions cause disaster? Those questions, plus a desire to play with and extend the conventions of romance, led to the writing of Frozen Music.

Esther Fisher, a journalist from London and Linus Stendal, prize winning Swedish architect have never met but they have known of each other all their lives through their mothers long-distance correspondence. When they do finally meet they are both in their thirties and at the opposite side of the battle over plans to build a new opera house and the proposed eviction of the old couple who lives on the land earmarked for the project.

When circumstances forces them to spend a summer in Linus’s family home on an island off the west coast of Sweden, attraction leads to love and love leads to disaster – at least in the short term.