The Mystery of Raspberry Hill
Stina is a girl of about nine who comes from a large, poor family in Helsinki in 1920 and who has TB. She is sent as a charity case to the expensive sanatorium at Raspberry Hill. There is a mystery about it, but everything seems normal at first. She is cared for by the seemingly kind head doctor, Dr Hagman and his wife. Frantz has researched the treatment of TB at the time, and it is convincing.
The mystery starts when Stina meets Ruben, a boy from Ward 23. Ruben only comes to visit her at night because she is hugely lonely. Stina later discovers that there is no Ward 23 any longer; it burned down in a fire. Who is Ruben and what is his message to her?
The twist at the end is stunning and quite deeply frightening. Dr and Mrs Hagman do not have good intentions. Any reader who wants to be lulled into a false sense of security and then become massively scared will enjoy this narrative.
The translation is fluid and does not interrupt the story in any way. The novel won a prize in Finland where it was first published in Swedish. It deserves to be well-known in the English-speaking world too.
