Short take: It was readable and went very quickly, but I was ultimately disappointed in the direction the book went after the first half. I was most interested in the angle about what happens to a person who is raised with a completely different set of stimuli and human interaction than the rest of society. I guess you could say that's exactly what the rest of the novel is about, but it seemed more to steer away from the deeper facets of that aspect and more towards general female teen angst. The novel started off with some real hints of something supernatural going on but really petered out with it as the main character ages. I was hoping for a little more depth of character and exploration of the mysteries around the initial abandonment and musical communication abilities of the child. Without being to spoiler-y once it went beyond the two main characters I felt the story kind went off the rails and didn't stick to the seeds from where it grew.I'm going to disagree with many others and say that I found Lindqvist's depiction of the inner mental lives of teenage girls to be lacking in believability, which was a bit of a problem for me seeing as that is the meat of the middle of the book and was what mostly led to my perceiving the last half to be much weaker. The emotional and shocking elements that happen in the first section were effective, compared to what happens at the end, which failed to engage me in any similar fashion.Still, the writing was always engaging, even when my interest was flagging in the last 100 pages, and there were many genuinely creative and creepy interactions and scenarios. He does a great job of capturing the horror of childhood, the other kids, the fitting in, or not fitting in, the blind worship, the loneliness and alienation. Similarly to his other books, this feels Scandinavian without being forced, a dark fairy tale where the translation seems to have kept the otherwordly feel, the oddness, perfectly.The only downside was that he almost got ABBA's 'Thank You For The Music' stuck in my head.
What do You think about Una Piccola Stella (2010)?
Really phenomenal book. Creepy, but greatly enjoyable.
—tayyyy14
That Abba song will never be the same again.
—Agus
