Frozen Music

'Frozen Music' interweaves the lives of two highly unusual children: Esther, whose father walked out of their London home one day without a word, leaving her mother to take to her bed and eat all day; and Linus, bullied by his father, spoiled by his adoring but eccentric uncles and aunts, growing up in Stockholm, longing to be an architect. Then 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 girlfriend. Esther and Linus emerge from their unusual childhoods to become friends, then adversaries, and finally lovers, fatally divided not only by a cause on which neither will give way, but also by a complex set of obsessions, old family secrets, and other lovers.