In deepest, darkest Sweden there is a telltale heart amid the panoply of crime fiction. Very rarely do we see the raw beauty of an infernal consciousness like The Ravens knock on our door and remind us that brutal poetics hold a more damning truth. Who else would have a 12-year-old boy cycle to his beloved recanting Steppenwolf?

Klas is a solitary child, a dreamer, a twitcher. He prefers life with the birds than with the oddballs of an isolated town with its own cast of arseholes and clowns. It’s just unfortunate that his father Agne also holds these cards, falling riotously into madness. The family has toiled the land for generations, and just as Agne’s father was dragged kicking and screaming to the asylum, Klas must reconcile the love and fear of his father’s insanity with a future life of drudgery on the farm. His mother and brother bear witness to this shift in varying degrees of pain, frustration and kindness. Klas is constantly reminded of what lies in store for him and soon realises that the farm may not be the only thing he inherits. But for all his bookishness and intellect, he attracts the somewhat troubled affections of a holidaying Stockholm girl who remains oblivious to the stigma Agne’s condition attracts, and questions the limits of love and obligation.

Everything is tense and uncomfortable, possibly because of Klas’s narration; it is almost out of time and place, with vignettes that give the novel an imagistic or kaleidoscopic feel, remaining linear but drawing us deep into his mind until we are uncertain if he is going mad or not. The intimacy is surprising and before you know it you’re bereft, left asking: can there be freedom in death?

Luke May is a freelance reviewer.