This dark, lyrical novel starts off with a firecracker of a beginning: On the day of her 75th birthday, Jenny Brodal quits her nearly 20-year-long sobriety with a bottle of Cabernet in her room. ("The trick was to get the wine right down to her feet," she tells herself, gulping the glasses down.) Downstairs, her grown daughter, Siri, is waiting with the rest of their family for the so-called celebration to begin. The story that follows flickers between the present and the past, exposing the flaws in Siri's marriage, the loneliness of her two children and the prejudices of the small fishing village where the family spends its holidays. Ullmann (daughter of the actress Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman) is a forceful, exquisite talent in her own right who has created a story you'll tear through for its plot twists about the family's missing babysitter; your heart even breaks for the far more universal struggles of the rest of the characters—struggles that ask us to question just why it takes so long to speak about family secrets.
— Leigh Newman
