The Seven Doors

In this elegantly plotted and economically executed tale of illicit passion from Ravatn (The Bird Tribunal), literature professor Nina Wisløff, who’s nearing retirement, is reluctantly house hunting because the Bergen, Norway, authorities plan to demolish the house where she and her physician husband, Mads Glaser, have lived for 35 years, in order to build a road. Meanwhile, Mads suggests that a second house they own might be perfect for their grown daughter, but the current tenant, Mari Nilsen, a 30-year-old single mother, will have to leave. When Mari disappears, Nina, who has publicly declared that literary scholars should investigate crimes, obsessively tracks Mari’s movements. Mari is later found dead, washed ashore near yet another house belonging to Nina and Mads. As revelations of Mari’s affair with an older married man cause Nina’s world to crash down around her, the reader will feel pity and terror—because it could so easily happen to anyone. Ravatn smoothly mixes Jungian and Freudian psychology with folklore and an affair’s lethal consequences. Inexorable fate drives this searing modern take on ancient Greek tragedy. (Apr.)