The subtitle of this novel is “a ghost story,” and so it is. I can’t 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 – but this is flat-out a suspenseful horror tale with a touch of mystery. And it’s quite a lot of fun.Reportedly, Icelandic fans of author Yrsa Sigurdardottir were so terrified by just the cover of her new horror book "I Remember You" that they complained to the publisher. Thus, it has been changed for U.K. and American editions, from a pair of staring eyes to a silhouetted man outside a decrepit house. Still scary, but not nearly as scary as what's inside these 370 pages. "I Remember You" ranks among the scariest, right up there with the best of Stephen King and Peter Straub. It's that good. And that scary. And, ultimately, that moving. "I Remember You" is a bit of a mystery, but it's primarily an eerie ghost story about missing children, an isolated house in the Icelandic fjords, love, bullies and loss. It is a horror novel with almost no gore; Sigurdardottir chills with sounds and smells and shadows, not blood.Seemingly random, creepy things happen in different parts of Iceland, but they are hardly random. The malevolent spirit haunting the abandoned fishing village must surely have some connection to the doctor’s missing boy, and photos defaced at the school seem strangely connected to a string of deaths...A 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 – 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 he’s losing his mind.I have never been a fan of ghost stories and am postively allergic to horror as a genre, but I was surprised at how thoroughly I enjoyed reading this book, though it wasn’t 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 – someone who has chosen to be evil or made a bad choice gets his or her comeuppance – 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 don’t live up to their responsibilities. As well as the actions of a certifiable pyschopath or two.It is a tragic, horrifying and totally believable story of coincidences. Sigurdardottir masterfully links the conncections into one very satisfying, and truly disturbing conclusion.A truly scary read! New Scandinavian Crime Fiction. Hooray. Rather in the vein of Stephen King.Set in the Westfjords in Hesteyri, Iceland. The story goes back and forth between three friends who go to Hesteyri to renovate a house and are stranded there AND Freyr, a psychiatrist and medical doctor who with his wife Sara is trying to get through life after their son Benni goes missing. The tension begins in chapter 1 and builds to the end.
What do You think about Geisterfjord (2010)?
Just the perfect atmospheric read I was looking for this October, if a little predictable.
—Qiu
Different.. Slower paced.. Not great but not awful
—serdartur
