Confiding in one another over hot-smoked trout and the new season's strawberries, the two women swap memories of loves lost, and the dark secrets that surround them both begin to come to light. As the icy winter gives way to spring, Astrid and Veronika are drawn together and begin to embark on a tender and unusual friendship. Astrid tentatively offers comfort in the form of companionship and lovingly home-cooked meals, but their friendship is a stop-start one. Her arrival is silently observed by gaunt Astrid, her elderly, reclusive neighbour from the farm next door, who in turn guards her own secrets. In the midst of a harsh winter, young writer Veronika arrives in the Swedish countryside seeking stillness and solitude to come to terms with a recent tragedy. As the icy winter gives way to spring, Astrid and Veronika are drawn together and begin. (Mar.In the midst of a harsh winter, young writer Veronika arrives in the Swedish countryside seeking stillness and solitude to come to terms with a recent tragedy. Olsson has a clear feel for the emotional wellsprings of both characters, but can't convert her terse lyricism into a fully realized story. Against the backdrop of the changing seasons and their small, plangent houses, the two women slowly tell each other their most closely guarded secrets (which concern their mothers and lovers), and venture, tentatively, out of the safety of their routines. Reclusive septuagenarian Astrid Mattson, thought by the village to be a witch, takes an interest in Veronika, and the two strike up a friendship based on loss. Astrid tentatively offers comfort in the form of companionship and lovingly home-cooked meals, but their friendship is a stop-start one.

She rents a small house in a rural town to work on her second, but in solitude finds herself seized by feverish dreams and paralyzed by the 'stillness' of the landscape and the memories of her recently dead fiancé. In Swedish novelist Olsson's somber debut, Veronika Bergman returns to Sweden after a childhood following her diplomat father around the world (her mother abandoned the family), and after publishing her first novel titled Single, One Way, No Luggage

Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson