Anyone who is a fan of vampires will be familiar with Let The Right
One In, Lindqvist’s chilling tale of a young girl who is not as she seems.
The masterful thriller was adapted into a highly acclaimed Swedish film, which has in turn undergone the obligatory Hollywood
remake. That novel was possibly the definitionof ‘dark’, yet the quality of the characters shone through and I was gripped from start to
finish. So I approached Harbour with a high level of anticipation and my expectations were met in some respects, not in others.
In terms of inventiveness, Lindqvist is not afraid to expect a certain amount of intelligence from his readers. Or at least, the ability
to pay attention. By inventing a whole new mythology, he asks readers to take a few sizeable leaps of faith and the jury is still out on whether he
has provided a soft landing. Starting with a compelling premise, he immediately captures the attention and presents a mystery which has readers’ minds working from the earliest pages.
When a young couple, Anders and Cecilia, take their daughter across the frozen harbour to visit an old lighthouse, the child inexplicably disappears into the barren landscape. Two years later, the grief-stricken couple have parted but Anders is unable to move on with his life. Battling a drink problem, he returns to the island of their torment and finds himself being slowly sucked into a terrifying mystery that tests the boundaries of human understanding.
Lindqvist regularly blends the magical into the mundane, something which achieves varying degrees of success. Although a bizarre sub-plot involving a retired magician and his intriguing pet is handled delicately, the book’s tone seems to veer from a low-key, creepy ghost story to a fully blown horror tale with
huge doses of fantasy thrown in. Personally, I preferred the quieter, dreadfilled
scenes that revealed mere glimpses of terror and I was slightly disappointed when
the story seemed to be grasping at epic solutions that didn’t really make sense. But I would always rather read novels that aim high and fall short, instead of those written to formula by authors who are afraid to explore new territory.
Whether or not you love Harbour will depend on your taste in supernatural
thrillers, but Lindqvist is definitely one of our most interesting contemporary
writers.
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