Cobbold, Marika

(Swedish)

Cobbold was born and educated in Gothenberg, Sweden, and she established her reputation as a novelist with Guppies for Tea (1993). Begin with this serio-comic story of a capable young woman's efforts to survive her family and keep her beloved grandmother out of a nursing home. The main character in A Rival Creation (1994) is learning to live with the fact that she will never be a good writer. She becomes caught up in a crisis of community as love affairs and violent disagreements spread through the village she lives in. A divorced woman sets up home next door to an alcoholic photographer in The Purveyor of Enchantment (1996). Their relationship deepens irresistibly as she comes to terms with her new situation. Frozen Music (1999) concerns the ill-starred love between a British woman journalist and a Swedish architect.

Susan Hill, Mary Wesley, Shena Mackay  DH