370 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2014
"International superstar Yrsa Sigurdardottir has captivated the attention of readers around the world with her mystery series featuring attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir. Now, Yrsa will stun readers once again with this out-of-this-world ghost story that will leave you shivering. In an isolated village in the Icelandic Westfjords, three friends set to work renovating a rundown house. But soon, they realize they are not as alone as they thought. Something wants them to leave, and it's making its presence felt. Meanwhile, in a town across the fjord, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son. When the two stories collide, the terrifying truth is uncovered. In the vein of John Ajvide Lindqvist, this horrifying thriller, partly based on a true story, is the scariest novel yet from Yrsa Sigurdardottir, who has taken the international crime fiction world by storm"--
This was a good story, with a great setting and some genuinely unsettling moments. Unfortunately I found the narration quite clunky - possibly a translation problem? - which made it difficult to immerse myself in the world of the story.
The subtitle of this novel is âa ghost story,â and so it is. I canât remember when I last read a novel that was so whole-heartedly about ghosts. Some books have a touch here and there of the supernatural â but this is flat-out a suspenseful horror tale with a touch of mystery. And itâs quite a lot of fun.returnreturnThere are two major threads to the novel. In one, a group of ill-prepared citified Icelanders have decided to renovate an abandoned house in Hesteyri, a remote fishing village in the northwestern fjords of Iceland that is no longer inhabited except for occasional summer vacationers. They hope to make a go of it, hosting paying summer guests, but the three friends, a married couple and an urbane woman friend, have few skills and little money. After a boat captain leaves them there with supplies, promising to return in a week, they …
The subtitle of this novel is âa ghost story,â and so it is. I canât remember when I last read a novel that was so whole-heartedly about ghosts. Some books have a touch here and there of the supernatural â but this is flat-out a suspenseful horror tale with a touch of mystery. And itâs quite a lot of fun.returnreturnThere are two major threads to the novel. In one, a group of ill-prepared citified Icelanders have decided to renovate an abandoned house in Hesteyri, a remote fishing village in the northwestern fjords of Iceland that is no longer inhabited except for occasional summer vacationers. They hope to make a go of it, hosting paying summer guests, but the three friends, a married couple and an urbane woman friend, have few skills and little money. After a boat captain leaves them there with supplies, promising to return in a week, they begin to realize how unprepared they are. The house is I Remember Youin much worse repair than they thought, the cold and the winter darkness is oppressive, and soon they realize they arenât alone on the island. A strange, ragged child seems bent on destroying their dreams of turning the vacant house into a liveable holiday home.returnreturnMeanwhile, in the remote port of Ãsaforþur, the closest town, a psychiatrist is treating a troubled old woman in a nursing home while trying to forget the fact that he lost his young son, something that drove a wedge between him and his wife (who canât put it behind her). âLostâ isnât a euphamism. The child disappeared without a trace, and the police can only surmise that he somehow wandered down to the sea and was drowned, his body never recovered. There is also the strange case of vandalism in a school which seems strangely like an incident decades ago.returnreturnThese things, of course, are hardly random. The malevolent spirit haunting the abandoned fishing village must surely have some connection to the doctorâs missing boy, and photos defaced at the school seem strangely connected to a string of deaths . . .returnreturnA great pleasure of this story is the drawing together of these threads as the author gives us a glimpse here, a hint there of how pieces of the story connect â all with a background of impending dread. Things at the remote abandoned village go from very bad to even worse, and the pyschiatrist begins to wonder if heâs losing his mind.returnreturnI have never been a fan of ghost stories and am postiively allergic to horror as a genre, but I was surprised at how thoroughly I enjoyed reading this book, though it wasnât always the right material to read in bed before drifting off to sleep. There are touches of humor here and there, well-drawn and sympathetic characters as well as some who are not, and a plot that keeps winding tighter and tighter. While these kinds of books are often thinly-disguised as morality tales â someone who has chosen to be evil or made a bad choice gets his or her comeuppance â the story behind the haunting places responsibility, as so often happens in Scandinavian crime fiction, on people who fail to care for the vulnerable and on indifferent social instutions that donât live up to their responsibilities. As well as the actions of a certifiable pyschopath or two.
