'The Shapeshifter's Daughter' by Sally Magnusson

Broadcaster and author Sally Magnusson returns to The Radio 2 Book Club once more, to discuss her new novel 'The Shapeshifter's Daughter'. The book is a re-telling of the Norse myth of Hel - set across the mythological realm of Asgard and present day Orkney Islands. Sally chats to Sara about her fascination with Scandanavia, the challenges of re-writing a myth and why Orkney is such a special place. We also hear a snippet from the audiobook, get a great book recommendation - and learn about what happened to the original Mastermind chair! (Sally's Dad was the great journalist and TV Presenter Magnus Magnusson)Here's a little more info on 'The Shapeshifter's Daughter':Before she was a hideous monster, the queen of the underworld was simply Hel. But cast as a girl out of lofty Asgard, realm of the gods, by Odin the Allfather, Hel's fate as the terrible goddess of death is sealed. Half beauty, half crone, she has reigned for aeons in the starless darkness of Niflheim, grimly welcoming the most pitiful of death's travellers to her ice-locked prison. Until one day a memory shifts, and she is forced to seek out the sun in Midgard, where humans have made their home.Faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Helen Firth makes the impulsive decision to return to Orkney after forty years to make peace with her past. Under the wintering solstice sun, she reconnects with the ungainly but affable Thorfinn Coffin, who helps her address the real reason she has returned to the islands: to die. As Helen draws closer to death and ever closer to Thorfinn, Hel in turn is intrigued by Helen. She, too, has a past to confront and a lesson to learn: that perhaps who she believes herself to be isn't who she really is.