The Shadow on the Stone Bench

The Shadow series by Maria Gripe is set in Sweden in the 1910s. It centres on the friendship that the upper-middle-class girl Berta develops with her family’s maid Carolin. Carolin seems to be hiding many secrets she doesn’t like to reveal  – is she really who she claims to be? “First Carolin showed me the photograph, then she suddenly changed her mind and put it away. But I caught sight of a dark shadow falling diagonally across the picture. Carolin had wondered about the shadow – whose it was. Invisible presences interested her the most, and she had spoken of the photographer as the one who is present in every image without being seen. This was typical of Carolin, this strange creature, who became our