REPTILE MEMOIRS

In this debut novel from Norway, an 11-year-old girl goes missing more than a decade after connected events involving a troubled young woman who sleeps with her pet python.

The little girl, Iben, disappears from a supermarket in 2017 after her mother, Mariam, refuses to buy her a zombie comic book. Mariam, who is married to a politician, responds strangely to the disappearance, which is investigated, along with Mariam's behavior, by an aging cop with a checkered past. Back in 2003, Liv, who was abused by her older brother when they were kids (she was then known as Sara—not her last name change), finds solace—and sexual gratification—in the scaly company of her demanding python, Nero, who must be fed with ever larger living things. Her human friend Anita, a new mother beaten by her husband, turns to Liv for help. Mariam later becomes part of this vicious cycle when she is raped, resulting in the birth of her daughter. Ulstein's provocative treatment of brutal male behavior, including an approving reference to female spiders devouring their male partners, can be powerful. But populated by many unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things, the novel loses focus at critical times. It's not enough that the increasingly large and hungry Nero commits an unmentionable nasty incident that upstages everything. Ulstein also feels compelled to include periodic first-person commentary from the python, who ironically but not inaccurately calls Liz "the cold woman."

An original but flawed thriller that never rises to the level of chilly.