Harbor

August 15, 2011
Lindqvist (Let Me In) turns a young girl’s mysterious disappearance into the catalyst for revelations about centuries-old natural and supernatural forces in this enthralling dark fantasy. When little Maja vanishes on a family outing to an icebound lighthouse off the coast of the island Domarö, her parents are devastated and their marriage never recovers. Anders, her father, returns to Domarö by himself, believing he can still find his daughter, but instead he meets up with old acquaintances, all of whom seem to be driven by malicious, inhuman impulses, and he hears previously unknown stories of a primitive past in which the people of Domarö regularly made human sacrifices to the sea. Lindqvist never quite pulls these elements of his sprawling story together, but he still presents an unsettling portrait of ordinary people discomposed by inexplicable supernatural experiences.

September 15, 2011

Scandinavian writers dominate the police-procedural genre. Are they now bent on taking over horror? Swedish creepmeister Lindqvist is hot on the case.  

The author of one of the scariest vampire novels to have come out in years, Let Me In (2007) (film version Let the Right One In), Lindqvist drifts squarely into Stephen King territory with his latest—which, it seems, is a bit of a roman a clef, reflecting the author's childhood in a Stockholm housing development on the edge of the city. So it is with Domarö, an island not far from the Swedish capital where hoary old fishermen mend their nets and rough-edged yokels sharpen their knives, even as smart urbanites zip about in their fine cars and well-made clothes. One of those city slickers, a pensive fellow named Anders, suffers a terrible blow when his daughter, Maja, sees something mysterious, goes to have a look and disappears. "She was good at finding places to hide," Anders reasons at first. "Although she could be over-excited and eager in other situations, when she was playing hide and seek she could keep quiet and still for any length of time." Well, this is a very serious game of hide and seek indeed, for others on this island have gone missing, too—boatloads of them, with cases of schnapps as a gift to the critters that dwell in the spectral Baltic waters. Will Anders ever find his daughter? Perhaps, perhaps not—and therein hangs the tale. Lindqvist ventures on heavy-handedness by introducing a character who, a touch too conveniently, happens to be a retired magician with a trick up his sleeve (or, more to the point, in his matchbox) and lots of wisdom to dispense. In the main, though, he capably keeps his story far from the usual splatterfest slasher stuff and instead holds it to the confines of psychological thriller, which is plenty spooky enough, atmospheric and foreboding: "There is a film of moisture over everything and water drips from the leaves of the trees, as if this island has risen from the sea just to meet him."

Perhaps not a book to read by the seashore, if you're literal-minded. A spooky pleasure, expertly told.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2011

Lindqvist's Let the Right One In has been made into two films, one Swedish and one American (called Let Me Be), with the Swedish version winning awards at 16 film festivals worldwide. The backlist paperback is one of the publisher's biggest sellers. Here, a six-year-old girl crosses the ice with her parents to visit a lighthouse and promptly vanishes. Her father later returns to the area and finds a surprising secretiveness about what happened. Watch this one; Lindqvist has fans.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
This eerie, atmospheric tale of desperation and strange bargains with incomprehensible forces begins with the disappearance of seven-year-old Maja. Two years later, her father, Anders, is back on the island, scene of her vanishing, intent on reassembling his life. He spent the interval drunk; his wife, Celia, left him; and he's obsessed with how perfect life with Maja was. His grandmother, Anna-Greta, knows something she's not telling. In fact, most of Domaro's year-round residents know at least something about the town's relationship with the surrounding sea. Anna-Greta's lover Simon, a former stage magician, has his own secrets but slowly discovers the island's secrets as his own becomes harder to keep. Living in the Shack, where he'd lived with Celia and Maja, Anders becomes increasingly convinced that Maja isn't dead and that he must rescue her. He'll go to any length, and eventually, the history of the island becomes clear. The book's long, complex buildup to a particularly satisfying conclusion is shot through with the very best kind of horrorsubtle, persistent, finally front-and-center.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)