The latest addition to my website is Peter Stamm‘s Ungefähre Landschaft (Unformed Landscape). The novel is not set in Stamm’s native Switzerland but in Norway, near the Russian border. Our heroine is Kathrine, a customs officer. She is divorced with a young son. She starts an affair with Thomas, a man seemingly with multiple achievements (Ph.D, black belt, champion swimmer and more) and he and his family make it clear how lucky she is to have him. However, he does not seem to want to have sex with her and it turns out that all his achievements are fake. She has a quick fling with an old friend, they find out and she is condemned. She decides to go after Christian, who had worked for a while in her village and tracks him down in Boulogne but he seems less than interested so she returns home to try and pick up her life. Most of the men in the story turn out badly as, indeed, do most of the relationships but it is a compelling tale.