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Each month, the Elliott Bay Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. Deception—the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this month's selection, The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson's most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Snow has been falling on the village all winter long. It covers windows and piles up in front of doors. The sun rises late and sets early, and even during the day there is little to do but trade tales. This year everybody's talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. She has no use for white lies that smooth social intercourse, and she can see straight to the core of any problem. Anna, an elderly children's book illustrator, appears to be Katri's opposite: a respected member of the village, if an aloof one. Anna lives in a large empty house, venturing out in the spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. But Anna has somthing Katri wants, and to get it Katri will take control of Anna's life and livelihood. By the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict of ideals that threatens to strip them of their most cherished illusions. Ruth Rendell said, "I loved this book. It's cool in both senses of the word, understated yet exciting, and with a tension that keeps you reading. I felt transported to that remote region of Sweden and when I finished it I read it all over again. The characters still haunt me."
