Amid the shouts of horrified onlookers, Stella stumbles, falling for a moment into Martin’s arms before plummeting to her death. (Did he try to save her?) So begins Linn Ullmann’s transfixing tale of...

Through the sublimely unreliable voice of its narrator, Karin, Before You Sleep reaches back from present day Oslo to 1930s Brooklyn to relate the emotional legacies of the Blom family. Karin is...