Frozen Music

Esther has been angry all her life - angry at her mother's frivolity, her father's detachment, the triviality of toys, and the lack of order in a world whose social rules, and obsession with love and having fun she finds baffling. Now, as a London-based journalist, she is being angry on behalf of an old couple about to be evicted to make way for a tycoon's dream opera house.

Coincidentally, the Swedish architect turns out to be the stepson of her mother's best friend, about whom Esther has been hearing for years. Linus, the clumsy, dreamy boy whose mother died tragically when he was seven, has grown into not only an elegant man, but an architect of vision, who longs one day to create a great building instead of a design compromise, but is as much a social misfit as Esther.

Their first meeting is hardly propitious, and matters are not improved when Esther is forced by an accident to spend a few weeks on an idyllic Swedish island with Linus, an assortment of distinctly peculiar relatives, and Linus's maddeningly cheerful, glamorous girlfriend, Pernilla. In a blue clapboard cottage, with white painted floorboards, dog-eared books and faded wallpaper, against a background of old, dangerous family secrets, Esther finds herself caught up in a love story which seems as impossible as a choice between life and death.

A compellingly warm, wry, funny story, centred on two flawed but enormously sympathetic characters, with a supporting case of engaging eccentrics, 'Frozen Music' is the most ambitious novel yet from this bestselling author, and the best.