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Book Reviewed by:Hildur Knútsdóttir's The Night Guest is an eerie and ensnaring story set in contemporary Reykjavík that's sure to keep you awake at night.
Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.
When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.
Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she's walked over 40,000 steps in the night ...
What is happening when she's asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won't anyone believe her?
What do you do when your world seems like it's falling apart all around you, and when even before the incident that set things off, you were barely holding it together? In Hildur Knútsdóttir's The Night Guest, translated from the Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal, Iðunn grapples with this question. In search of the answer, she descends into a darkness that will leave readers shocked and terrified. Knútsdóttir's novel is a horrifying look into how being a woman complicates prolonged exposure to trauma, whether it be physical, emotional, or a harrowing experience of both...continued
Full Review
(860 words)
(Reviewed by Lisa Ahima).
It's 2024. COVID-19, while still dangerous, is no longer the unknown factor it once was, and extended quarantines are no longer mandated as in the earlier days, pre-vaccination. Though the world has never stopped talking about what isolation has done to our collective psyche, I think it's only this year that we're starting to see some of the most uniquely relevant narratives about how it feels to be utterly lonely. Not all these narratives are set since the pandemic; for some, the experience has dredged up past feelings, others have had to sit with their overall relationship to being alone. Global isolation has forced us to confront these emotions; at the same time, many have turned to escapism to cope. Two thriller narratives that came out...
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