I stayed up late last night finishing this book and then could not sleep for thinking about it. I was really bowled over by it. I've read a description of it as a "literary thriller" but that hardly does justice to it. Yes, it does begin with the discovery of a murder, and yes, at the end we find out who did it. And yes, that adds to the enjoyment of the book. But what caught me and kept me enthralled was the astonishing range and depth of the characters and their complex, almost invariably unspoken, relations with each other. Mrs Ross, who I suppose we must call the central character, narrates parts of the text, but her perspective is interwoven with those of a multiplicity of other characters including her 17 year old adopted son, who is found to have disappeared after the body is discovered and so is suspected of the murder. As we shift from character to character, each proves to have her or his hidden agenda -- feelings develop which can rarely be acted on -- discoveries are made which open new vistas -- people learn painful lessons about themselves and the world around them. But much remains concealed, even from the reader: we never learn, for example, the full story behind Mrs Ross's early life, though throughout the novel she reveals more and more about her incarceration, as a young girl, in an Edinburgh asylum. We never even learn her first name. Nor do we (and nor does she) ever discover anything much about the life, past and present, of the Indian guide William Parker, who leads her through the freezing wastes of the Canadian winter in search of her son and of the solution to the mystery that caused him to run away. The delicacy with which the growing relationship between these two is depicted one of the most impressive aspects of the book. Stef Penney, who has never visited Canada, evokes the place brilliantly and also the time, which is 1867. And she catches, with remarkable perceptiveness, the troubled and ambiguous relations between the Indians and the colonising whites. But what kept me awake, thinking, into the night was the admirable, though somewhat painful, way in which she refuses to supply a happy, or even a conclusive, ending. People have certainly learned much about themselves and about those closest to them, but whether this knowledge will make much difference to their lives is a moot point. I was left suspecting that it will not, in any practical or visible sense. This sounds sad -- it is sad, in one way -- but also uplifting in some strange sense. If you have not read this book, do!