Cover Image: Reptile Memoirs

Reptile Memoirs

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Member Reviews

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead.

I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings.

Anything requested and approved will be read and a decent quality review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

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This is such an unusual novel as one of its characters is actually a python named Nero! Nero is a baby when he is acquired but as he grows, of course so does his appetite! There are quite a few human characters as well; Miriam's young daughter, Iben goes missing on a shopping trip, and detectives Roe and Ronja are pursuing leads on several cases as well. The timelines are often confusing and I had to make notes to be clear about what and who was involved in each year, but overall the book was fearsome and crazy-good! I love Nordic noir so this was a pleasant surprise (though I'm not a fan of snakes) and it may haunt me for awhile!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

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Reptile Memoirs is a thriller, following two timelines. One, of a young woman who after watching a nature show adopts a pet snake, The later timeline follows a woman who while shopping with her daughter, gets into an argument with her and after her daughter storms off, she leaves the shopping centre without her.

Reptile Memoirs had a lot of potential. It was atmospheric, had just enough hints of what was to come, and seemed to be building to an interesting tie together of the two timelines and the mystery between them. Some readers will get a lot from this, and will enjoy it immensely.

Unfortunately, it also has some unnecessarily descriptive animal deaths tied in with some very unnecessary masturbation. I’m fine with the feeding of snakes. They need to eat too. What I’m apparently less fine with is someone feeding a kitten to a snake and masturbating to it. I’ve finally found my limit of what I’ll read! And that was indeed my limit. I couldn’t finish the book after that. Maybe the rest is great, but that part made me not care to discover what else would happen. So, consider yourself forewarned if you’re interested in reading this, if this is also your limit to what you’ll read too. It’s a small part, and if you’re fine with it, it’s probably worth reading the rest! If you’re not okay with, I can’t blame you.

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Wow, there were some moments in this book that made me gasp, sent chills and creeped me out, I’m not a big fan of snakes (give me spiders any day!).
It’s a slow build and told in two timelines. The first begins in 2003 where we meet Liv and her two flat mates Egil and Ingvar. Her background is a slow reveal and it does take a while for the book to get going. The second timeline is set in 2017 and a few characters are introduced. Mariam and her pre-teen daughter Iben, they have a difficult relationship and then she goes missing. And two police officers, Roe, 60yo who has never got over the death of his daughter 11 years earlier and Ronja, young and less experienced, called in to investigate the girls disappearance.
This is a pretty dark book, there’s a lot of grief, violence and psychological damage but it is put together so well as the characters in the two timelines come together that it was a compelling read.

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One of the best thrillers I've read! Reptile Memoirs is a twisty literary thriller center around the mystery of a missing girl and how the past can always come back to haunt you. It's incredibly fast paced and leaves you always second guessing what you think the ending will be. Fans of Karen Slaughter and Gillin Flynn should definitely give this a shot!

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Reptile Memoirs is one of the most peculiar, surreal thrillers/crime novels I've ever read. Other readers have remarked that the book is slow, but I had the opposite experience; Silje Ulstein's sinuous prose and unusual characters and storytelling style captivated me immediately and had me reading late into the night.

Taking place in two towns in Norway on multiple timelines, Reptile Memoirs is mostly narrated in 2005 by Liv, a directionless young woman with a pet python named Nero, and in 2017 by Mariam, a politician's wife whose daughter has gone missing. The story is told from several other perspectives, too, including that of Nero himself.

Reptile Memoirs is a novel that gives up its secrets at the exact right moments in the narrative, making for an engaging reading experience. It's a dark, disturbing, unsettling book that doesn't shy away from taboo subjects. Using snake imagery as a metaphor, Ulstein weaves a serpentine tale of rebirth and renewal and independence, of shedding one's skin, and of giving in to baser instincts. This is a book about generational trauma, the complexities of family, and how cold-blooded humans can be -- but also explores the traits that separate us from the snakes: our need for connection, vulnerability, understanding, and fellowship. It's just as perceptive as it is propulsive, and it's a book I will be thinking about for a long time.

This is not a book for the faint of heart, but nevertheless, I would highly recommended Reptile Memoirs for fans of Scandinavian crime fiction and pitch-black psychological thrillers.

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With a Burmese python as one of its narrators Reptile Memoirs sets itself apart from your traditional Nordic noir fare, but despite its unconventional approach this debut novel one of the most riveting and consuming psychological thrillers of 2022 thus far.

It’s 2017 in Kristiansund, Norway. Mariam Lind and her 11-year-old daughter, Iben, are doing some shopping at a local supermarket when they have a disagreement about which magazine Iben wants. Marian refuses to give in and takes off in a huff, leaving her daughter behind. Furious about the incident and frustrated with her claustrophobic life as a mother and politician’s trophy-wife, she heads for the fjords on a long drive. When she returns home late in the evening, Iben isn’t there…

Full review here - https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2022/03/30/reptile-memoirs-silje-ulstein/ and on Crime Fiction Lover - https://crimefictionlover.com/2022/03/reptile-memoirs-by-silje-o-ulstein/

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The Norwegian noir novel follows the stories of Liv and her friends and her pet python, Nero, and 13 years later, the story of Mariam Lind searching for her missing daughter, Iben. The book seems to have disparate characters and different time periods, and readers have to persist to find the connections later in the book.

Liv choice of a snake as a pet which she treats as a confidante, seems connected to her growing up in a dysfunctional family.

Her link to the second main character in the novel, Mariam, came as a surprise, and the suspense begins in earnest with Mariam's search her old friends and acquaintances to find her lost child. The python Nero is present throughout the book, in both Liv's and Mariam's lives.

The story is noir because of .....well, the reptile as well as some of the other characters.

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This unsettling Nordic noir novel is told through the viewpoints of several characters in several different time periods. Liv, survivor of an abusive childhood, lives a decadent lifestyle sharing a house with two friends, but when they impulsively acquire a baby python, Liv finds herself forging a strange connection with it. Nero, the python, reveals in occasional sections that he hates all humans and sees them as prey, but he will play a pivotal role in Liv’s future. Years later Mariam, wife of a prominent politician, argues with her eleven-year-old daughter, who storms off, and is shocked after taking off for several hours to find that her daughter hasn’t returned home, but is missing. Roe, a police officer with his own traumatic past, suspects her of killing her daughter, aand seems to know more about Mariam than he admits. The pieces eventually all fit together and the secrets of the past are revealed. An unusual idea with a creepy, gothic feel, this is an intriguing and quite disturbing story. I wanted to know what happened but felt that some of the events were a bit lurid and the characters unlikeable. Possibly because I don’t like snakes!

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Reptile Memoirs is not easy reading, it has multiple timelines and narrators and the story jumps back and forth, but as you keep on reading it, you can see quite a few social themes in the background: dissociated family lives, inconsequential relationships laced with drugs, too many hidden truth in order to make the reality a little more palatable, bad parenting, strange addictions. The snake is the connecting point for all the characters and acts more like a conscience for them all. It also shows the natural need for animals (man included) to hunt and get fed, and have some kind of normalcy in life. It's a strange, dark story, but well put together with great descriptions of sensations, feelings, and places. Reptile Memoirs falls out of the commonplace and should be a must-read for those who enjoy darker mysteries.

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This book is a little off putting at first, and jumps between narrators and timelines. The audiobook was enjoyable for understanding the Norwegian names, but overall I couldn't finish it. I stopped at 40%. It wasn't exciting enough for me and I didn't care for the characters.

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Reptile Memoirs is a book that slithers and hisses its way into your consciousness. The story is of two missing children, 13 years apart and what happened to them. Told in multiple narrative voices this is a book that requires concentration but repays it in spades. It wraps its sinuous, scaly body around your mind, hypnotising you with rhythmic movements even as you surrender to its gaze.

Reptile Memoirs has a dual timeline and the narrative switches rapidly back and forth between 2005 and 2017. Set in Norway, in two towns, Ålesund and Kristiansund, it is the story of Liv who has grown up a damaged young woman, emotionally scarred by her mother and abused by her sleazebag brother, Patrick.

As soon as she is able, Liv gets out of the family home and finds a room in a shared basement apartment whose other occupants, Egil and Ingvar, are party boys. There she indulges her dream of owning a snake and buys Nero, a baby Burmese python, whom she keeps in her room. It is on Nero that Liv showers all the love and affection that she has been denied in her short life. He becomes her surrogate child and she resists the efforts of her flatmates to parade the snake at parties and even imagines she can understand its insistent hissing. It’s not altogether a healthy relationship, but Liv has never had anyone to love and Nero is the object of all her affection to the extent that she anthropomorphises him.

Liv finds herself unable to form healthy relationships with anyone her own age, though it is only when she meets an artist, Anita that she finds some happiness.

Detective Roe Olsvik is turning 60. He carries his own damage; he lost his daughter in 2005 and he and his wife never recovered from that tragedy. Now he is with the Kristiansund Police Department, keeping himself to himself and always looking for answers to what happened to his ‘Kiddo’.

When he hears that Iben, the daughter of notable business woman Mariam Lind and local poliyician, Tor, has gone missing, he immediately suspects the parents – not least because Mariam is behaving very oddly indeed. Olsvik’s colleagues Ronja, Birte, and August, can’t quite understand why he is so fixated on that angle and they have their own suspicions about Roe’s behaviour.

Reptile Memoirs is a book that shifts perspectives and timelines constantly which means you do have to focus quite intently, which is sometimes irritating in the midst of a serpentine plot dynamic where the pacing ebbs and flows. It is ambitious and unsettling – really quite unsettling in the case of Liv’s relationship with Nero, which is not for the faint-hearted.

But the plot is ingenious and very well done and as a result the surprises are genuinely thrilling and not a little jaw dropping. The psychological elements of this thriller are fascinating and brilliantly done, down to the book’s most unusual voice.

Verdict: Dark and sinuous, Reptile Memoirs is a study in damaged personalities and relationships. It is full of dark secrets and the inheritance that comes with family traumas. Certainly distinctive, this is one book that will linger in the memory and not for anyone with Ophidiophobia. But for those who like their crime beautifully intense with a strong, intense psychological bent, this is a sure fire winner.

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How does one even properly review a book like this? This is maybe one of the strangest books I have ever read. It was INCREDIBLY cringe-worthy, dark, and twisted but I say that in a good way. There was certain parts I had to skip over because my animal loving self couldn't handle what was about to happen. However, the reader in me appreciated these scenes because they went with the plot perfectly(I just couldn't read it all). I'm the weird girl that quickly becomes obsessed with these types of books.

I think it's best to go into this one blind, but just be prepared for the weirdness of it all. Did I mention an animal has a POV in this? At first I was confused until I realized who was speaking and then I was like well damnnn. This is definitely one of those reads that you will think about long after you read.

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The creativity of this novel was certainly refreshing, given how I often feel like I’m reading something I’ve already read before, but the book was so odd and scattered. While I wanted to know how all of the pieces connected, I didn’t find this enjoyable at all.

I am immensely grateful to Grove Press for my digital review copy through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

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A fiercely unique and ultimately unsettling read, REPTILE MEMOIRS has a creepy originality which lingers in the reader's mind long after the final word is read. Clearly deserving of its international acclaim--it remains the kind of book some readers will embrace...and which will provoke shudders in others.

Many thanks to Grove and to Netgalley for the early look.

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𝐇𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐮𝐬.

Not all books have the ability to unsettle the reader, but Reptile Memoirs shook me. It’s an unusual tale with an obsessive love for a snake that ‘crosses the differences between the species’. While not quite maternal, nor can this connection developing between lonely, young Liv and a python named Nero be called romantic either, though there is certainly a lot of unhealthy projecting of human emotions upon the cold blooded creature occurring. The novel begins in Ålesund, Norway 2003 with friends Liv, Ingvar and Egil (who live in flatshare) watching a show about pythons on television after a night of partying. Liv is riveted by the creature on the screen and when a guy says he knows where they can obtain one, soon Liv, Ingvar and Egil add Nero to their dwelling. I spent a lot of time feeling funny reading about Nero, as my own dog shares the same name, which made the story so much creepier for me. Is this affection mutual? Is it possible? Don’t people do this with other pets, without anyone batting an eye? Dogs, cats, goats, birds…

Jump to Kristiansund 2017 Mariam Lind is at a shopping center with her beautiful daughter Iben, her husband Tor is the one who usually takes their girl shopping but Mariam is trying to close the distance growing between she and her eleven-year-old child. Weary of her girl’s desire for gifts, she refuses to buy her the tasteless, “sexy” zombie comic book she covets. She swears to focus on her girl today and not her company (which she is CEO of) Optihealth, ignoring her ringing phone but when she tries to find her child at the magazine rack, she is gone. She looks everywhere, finding that Iben truly has vanished, she isn’t about to fall for this attempt at punishing her for not giving in to her daughter’s demands. She leaves in her car after loading her groceries, assuming Iben just ran home. Surely, the reader can guess it’s not going to be that simple.

Back to 2003, Liv sees someone from her past, Patrick, and slowly her haunted childhood unfolds. She is traumatized, dark memories still have her in their grasp. The encounter has her mother calling her, and it’s evident she has disappeared from her family when she denies who she is. Is it any wonder she feels closest to a cold blooded reptile when failed by human warmth? The flatmates are supposed to be sharing Nero, but Liv feels he is meant to be hers alone from the moment she touches him. It is something sacred. It’s a fascinating psychological story, Liv’s longing to merge with the snake, transferring her own nature upon him, the insight into the reptile’s mind. It’s very clever.

Back to Mariam, who is behaving oddly, wondering about disappearing herself, from her own family and life. She thinks about the reality and how she is a trophy wife to her husband, local politician Tor. Thinking about how she could leave him, but wouldn’t take her daughter, who seems to belong more to Tor if she is honest with herself, the reader is wondering why she isn’t worried about Iben. She eventually makes her way home, assuming her daughter is there with her father, surely angry that she has been ignoring his calls asking where she is. The whole time wanting nothing more than to just step away from the life she has made. Iben never came home, and Mariam’s own strange choices seem suspicious, considering. What sort of mother doesn’t immediately rush to find their child, angry or not with their antics? Are we being misled, is there going to be some weird twist where she has hurt her?

Then the snake begins to narrate, which lends a surreal air.

Liv can not get enough of Nero, sharing a bed with him even. Her world shifts to focus on caring for her beloved, and doing things that are unthinkable to most of us.

Detective Roe Olsvik prefers keeping work and his private life separate, angry that he is still alive when other, more deserving people are not, he can’t let go and enjoy his co-workers and his 60th birthday surprise party. He is trying to walk away for some fresh air after playing along and blowing out the candles blazing away on his birthday cake when co-worker Shahid runs to up and informs him that a girl has disappeared, missing for nine hours. That girl, of course, is Iben.

Out come all the secrets and lies. There are tangled relationships in the apartment in Ålesund, Liv encounters a drug dealer, and an old grandmotherly type with lots of kittens, warm sweet kittens that would make great pets to take home… unless your mind bends to other twisted purposes. An artist friend, yet another abusive relationship, lost youth, struggling young mothers…. Liv loves the brutal honesty of Nero, unlike humans, just what happened to Liv that she trusts snakes more than her own species? It goes back to abuse, and the shame of loving your abuser, as children sometimes do, so hungry for affection.

Back to Mariam, Detective Roe’s questions feel like accusations, but is she guilty? We slowly discover why Mariam may feel less of a parent to her child than Tor. This is a story full of shadows, of characters living ‘locked in rooms with their own darkness’, longing for love and destruction both- damaged. The past colliding with the present, stories bumping against each other until it all comes together. There is so much more I want to write about, Roe’s own issues, but I don’t want to spoil the reveals. What the hell did I just read? It’s disturbing but had me hooked, ,one of those stories that stays with you like an illness you can’t quite kick. Yes, if you enjoy feeling disoriented- read it! It is that much weirder for me writing this review while I am sick and on medication.

Publication Date: March 15, 2022

Grove Atlantic

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I so wanted to like this one .it sounded like it would be a great read.
Unfortunately for me I just had a hard time getting into it and liking the characters.
First for me from this author, still would read others.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for an early release of this book.

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Norwegian noir with the added bonus of a snake as a narrator. Yep, Nero the snake provides his POV in this dual time line novel that moves between 2005 and 2017 and between the issues faced by two women, Liv and Mariam. Liv, a nursing student with three flatmates, adopts Nero and becomes obsessed with him. She's an abuse survivor. In 2017, Mariam, married to a politician, has a moment when she just can't take her daughter Iben anymore and leaves her in a store. Of course, Iben disappears and Det. Roe Olsvik has a mess on his hands. There are secrets, lies, noir, and murder. It's an odd novel in some ways and the pacing felt a bit off, especially in the beginning. That said, wait for the twists. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. No spoilers from me.

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I feel like I've been reading this for so long, and the pay off totally wasn't worth it! I have an intense fear and loathing of snakes so you may wonder "why the hell are you reading this book?" but it sounded weird and weird always intrigues me. Unfortunately all the characters were boring, actually the most intresting parts were the chapters told from the snakes perspective. The story took ages to get going and it has some truly disturbing scenes in it and really grotesque imagery, but the common thread running through it all was flimsy at best. Poor execution.

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I was really intrigued by the premise of Reptile Memoirs by Silje Ulstein, unfortunately I had a really hard time connecting with the story and any character (especially the chapters with the snake). The writing style is not bad, but if you'd ask me to use a few words to describe what happens in the story, I'd have no idea what to say. Too confusing for me, but I'm sure many will enjoy it more than I did. Thanks NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this copy! DNF at 20%.

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