There are books in the world that are not for the depressed, because the events paint an inevitable winding down of all that is good, and it can actually weigh on a monster. People get old. Injuries pile up. Forests are flattened. Desperate men and women do horrible horrible things to themselves and others. Sure it’s a nice day today, but the fuckers would take that away from us if they could, wouldn’t they? It seems like I’ve been waiting for a novel like this for a long time. From the same author who brought you Let the Right One In, we get a subtle and terrifying book with a great deal of scope. I’ll admit that the first fifty or so pages weren’t exactly gripping, but once Harbor had me hooked, it was hard to put down.
Although there are a large number of tales and characters woven together in the book, Harbor mostly follows the story of two men who are related, but not by blood. There is Anders, who is really the focus of the book, and Simon, who is basically a step grandfather to Anders. Simon and Anders both live on a remote island where life moves a little more slowly than the rest of the world. The book opens with the mysterious disappearance of Maja, the temperamental daughter of Anders, during a family trip to a local lighthouse. The unsolved disappearance of his little daughter breaks Anders, breaks his marriage, and sends him into a downward spiral. After several years away from the island, Anders decides to return, find his life again, and perhaps exorcise his ghosts.
Once he returns, however, he finds that things aren’t as simple as they might have seemed. The island is haunted by strange happenings and a long history involving human sacrifice and mysterious disappearances.
Simon is a retired professional magician (of the kind who pulls rabbits from hats, does tricks with cards, and saws pretty ladies in half on stage) who has stumbled onto an insect-like creature that grants him supernatural control over water. Simon and a host of other island residents help Anders, whether they mean to or not, as he attempts to piece together what really happened to his daughter.
Joining in on the fun are:
- Anna-Greta, Simon’s long time partner and de facto matriarch of the island.
- Elin, the girl from Anders’ generation who everyone was hot for, who got rich and famous, and who returned to the island to hide away and make herself look old and deformed with plastic surgery.
- Two resurrected and violent teenaged thugs who speak only in Smiths lyrics and terrorize the locals, Elin, and Anders.
- The Sea
The source of the haunting in Harbor is the sea. Necessary to Anders’ understanding of what happened to his daughter we find several hundred years of stories of people who were lost at sea (or more appropriately, taken by the sea) before her. As the book progresses, Anders is simultaneously solving a mystery and losing his mind. As with Let the Right One In, there is a fascination or play with childhood, immaturity, and maturity. And failure. Incidentally, those of us who are familiar with songs by The Smiths might find Sheila Take a Bow going through our heads. Let’s see the numbers:
Creepy Factor: 5 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 3 out of 5
Final result: I loved this book and had a hard time putting it down. Harbor is a series of ghost stories that fill in different parts of a larger painting by an author who doesn’t feel the need to answer every single question he raises. It has depth and scope, and it’s not afraid to do something really unthinkable to itself in the bathroom when it hits bottom.
Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist – 2011 – St. Martin’s Press
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