The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant

Pia is a great heroine - she's a deep thinker but she's also impulsive and you feel a great deal of sympathy for her as she worries and worries over the possibility of moving to England. She also paints a vivid picture of a small town German childhood, which is tremendously interesting. Grant blends old myths and legends into her narrative through a kindly friend of the family who tells the two junior detectives all sorts of deliciously shivery scary stories. Katharina's disappearance forces all sorts of suppressed problems out into the open - the stresses in Pia's parents' marriage, the gossip-ridden undercurrents of bad feeling in the town, and the unpleasant tendency to violence you see in frightened people. It's a thoroughly satisfying and yet out-of-the ordinary story combining the mystery of missing girls with a child living through a family break up. I haven't read anything quite like it for ages. The only person in school who wants to know her is also the only person less popular than she is - StinkStefan.Īnd when Katharina Linden goes missing, at a carnival and in broad daylight, it's Stefan who joins Pia in trying to uncover the truth. So Pia loses a grandmother and all her friends. Who wants to sit next to the girl whose grandmother exploded, after all? It might be catching. With the time-honoured tradition of peer group cruelty, she's gossiped about, mocked and ostracised. You'd think such a traumatic event might lead her to some sympathy amongst her schoolmates, but it's not so.

Oma Kristel managed to ignite her own carefully-lacquered coiffure whilst lighting the Advent crown and burned to death in front of the entire family.

My life might have been so different had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded. It's elegantly written and has a great deal to offer.

Summary: A thoroughly satisfying and out-of-the ordinary story combining the mystery of disappeared girls with a child living through a family break up.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant