The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

In the bookshop

Helen Grant was born in London. She read classics at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years. In 2001 she and her family moved to Bad Münstereifel in Germany, and it was exploring the legends of this beautiful town that inspired her to write her first novel. She now lives in Brussels.

The novel was published by Penguin, but on the inside of the cover it says:Fiction Puffin loves. Since Puffin is a series for young readers, I believe that this novel would be suitable for teenagers.

The main character is ten-year-old Pia Kolvenbach who lives in Bad Münstereifel with her family, a younger brother, a German father and an English mother, who is not always pleased with the fact that she is living in Germany. Pia is also the narrator of the whole story and she tells it like a ten-year-old, all the way through. In the opening scene, her paternal grandmother explodes when she lights a cigarette after having sprayed her hair with horrendous amounts of hair spray. (This rings a bell with me. Someone else has written about an exploding relative too, maybe John Irving?) This incident soon becomes known in the small town and subsequently, Pia loses her friends in school and becomes the class pariah. The only one left for her to be with is Stefan, the son of alcoholics who is looked down upon by everyone.

Pia and Stefan often go to visit an old man called Herr Schiller, a man with a mysterious past containing a serious fallout with his brother. Herr Schiller tells the children exciting stories and legends from the area.

When the inhabitants of Bad Münstereifel celebrate the carnival, a girl from Pia's school disappears and she is soon followed by more girls. While to local police seem very inefficient and the town gossips have a field day, Pia and Stefan start investigating the mystery on their own. After taking considerable risks, they finally arrive at the horrible solution.

The novel is well written and the old legends of the area, which the author knows well, are fascinating. Despite the atrocious content – though I have to stress that sex crime or pedophilia are never mentioned at all – the target group of the novel must be young readers, since the style of writing is very down-to-earth and there is neither much analysis, nor several layers in the narrative. The chapters are short and it is easy to read. Reading this novel is no challenge, but it is interesting from beginning to end.

Review by Sanne