“They couldn’t help being saddled with her. They tried to make her feel like a member of the family, but they didn’t realize their efforts only showed that she wasn’t. It was quite natural. She simply was no their child. Nothing could change that.”
“Both Dag and Nora felt that houses were like living beings. They had souls. Houses and people couldn’t just be matched up and live together any old way, They didn’t always get along well. There could be things just weren’t right.”
After experiencing several inexplicable incidents, lonely Nora receives a strangely lifelike doll, which leads her to discover long-hidden secrets about her family.
“But Nora didn’t want Mama to go. She didn’t want to say good-bye. Mama bent over Nora with her bright smile, but Nora didn’t smile back. She grabbed her umbrella and pulled hard. ‘Don’t go!’ she cried.”
“They brought photographs as well. Silly pictures of themselves with her mother and father. On excursions, in boats and cars, at parties, on beaches. Squinting, unrecognizable faces, in which they expected her to be interested, when in fact they took her own image of them away from her.”
“Yes, everything was back to normal. Maybe it had gotten a little chilly. The sun, about to set, filled with white tulips on the table with light. The wall clock ticked softly, and in the window the potted plans held their fragile leaves up to the sunlight.”
“She didn’t know exactly how it all started, but it began soon after they had moved into this old building last spring. She hardly gave the first few occurrences a thought. Because Anders had torn off wallpaper throughout the apartment, revealing closets that had been nailed shut, everything seemed unsettled.”
“Ever since Nora moved into the new apartment, strange things have been happening - cryptic phone calls, hidden messages, haunting visits by an invisible presence, and a doll that sometimes seems to be alive.”