The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

Descriptions of elderly people burning themselves to death open and close this novel about a series of child abductions in a small German town during 1999. These horrible events are related with wry humour by Pia, the 10-year-old child of a German father and English mother whose marriage is running into trouble. Pia’s drolly resentful voice describes both the polite rituals of a tight little town in which ‘it would take real ingenuity to keep anything secret’, and the miasmic sewers and clammy oubliettes which irrigate the id of this self-deludingly straitlaced community.

It will be clear from the above that the story is all about otherness and oppositions, but this summary would be too heavy a reduction: the most charming aspect of Grant’s writing is the moving way in which the vivid, ordinary anguish of ostracism and family strife is communicated, then counterpoised, with episodes of solidarity and warmth. The book would provide a stimulating resource for a reading circle, but beware that the more worldly readers will spot the denouement well before the innocents.