‘I Remember You’ feels like a slightly unnecessary addition to the Nordic noir bandwagon, tacking on an element of scary-child supernatural horror to the genre’s usual ingredients – a tortured detective figure, distracting knitwear, frozen landscapes and the stench of corruption. This bestselling novel (now a film) by the ‘queen of Icelandic crime fiction’, Yrsa Sigurđardóttir, opens with a grisly discovery – the body of a 71-year-old woman found hanged in a church with crosses cut into her back. The only doctor available to examine the corpse is a troubled psychiatrist (Freyr) from the small fishing port of Ísaforþur, whose eight-year-old son vanished a few years earlier. Meanwhile, in a seemingly separate narrative, a hopelessly underprepared young couple (Garðar and Katrin) and Líf, their newly widowed, and rather eccentric, friend plan to renovate a creepy old house in the western fjords, and open it as a B&B in the long abandoned village of Hesteyri (an actual place), but are plagued by visions of a young boy...
But just when you think you’ve stepped into a page-turning procedural thriller, the clues linking the disparate storylines begin to point to an unearthly culprit.
The trouble is none of these narrative lines actually come together until the very end, in a rather anti-climactic finale. Yes, the themes of the ghostly boy sightings, strange deaths etc connect them but many of the main protagonists never meet; leading to a rather disjointed experience for the reader.
The flow of the novel is somewhat worsened by Sigurđardóttir’s tendency to over describe, sometimes in unnecessary detail: a habit that breaks up the flow of the action… lines such as “he opened the door but there was nobody in the cupboard, just an old mop that fell directly out and to the left of him” or “he suddenly realised it was cold in the room, he had arrived with his winter jacket on and so had opened the window as the air conditioning was switched off at this time of year. However, he had not taken his jacket off and so only now realised how cold the room had become” … ok! We get it: he opened the office window and now it’s cold – did that need a paragraph?
Maybe it’s a matter of personal taste, but for me the supernatural explanation felt like a plot cop-out. Despite the actual settings and supposedly creepy story I just didn’t find it scary. Maybe I’ve been immunised by too many Stephen King books as a child. Or perhaps the book simply lacks a truly shocking moment of horror: jump-scares along the lines of loud bangs, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ghostly glimpses, loud whispers etc may be entertaining enough in an okay horror/thriller film, but they certainly didn’t have me reaching for a cushion whilst reading this book.
The worse thing is, none of these characters are particularly likable. From Freyr, the psychiatrist who left his distraught wife after their son went missing, in case her madness was catching (a strange proposition from a mental health professional!), to the stereotypical ‘leave it to me I’m a man’ character of Garðar and the ineffectual and quite possibly bonkers Líf. Ultimately, I found it hard to care about their tribulations and survival… Brusque policewoman Dagny could have been interesting, but her character just seems to be making up the numbers here. A shame.
But this is just my opinion. All the reviews of this book (and the film, which I haven’t seen) have raved at its scariness and cleverness in combining Scandi-noir with the supernatural (it’s not unique in this by the way). One review screamed “A dark and terrifying MASTERPIECE!” on its headline. Steady on...
There have even been hysterical reports of people needing counselling after reading the book… really? I suspect if that’s the case they were probably in need of a few sessions before they read the book.
The best I can do is say I enjoyed some of the descriptions of the desolation surrounding both locales in the book, but as a horror/crime book? Nope, not for me…
So, another book that is more miss than hit as I continue the home straight and descend from the Arctic. Having now started the Faroese entry in my journey ‘Buzz Aldin: What Happened To You in All The Confusion?’ I have a much better feeling that this is one of those books – quirky and unique – that I will savour until the final page. But more of that later…
I take a bus down the east coast (there are plenty of them) to the port of Seyðisfjörður. From there I take the rather luxurious overnight ferry to Faroe Islands, leaving at 8.00pm and arriving at 3pm the next day into the Faroese capital Tórshavn, boasting a population of 13,000. The MS Norröna, which departs once a week, appears to have aspirations to be a luxury liner – boasting restaurants, cafes, a cinema, shopping centres and free wifi (sadly, the swimming pool and hot tubs are closed for winter).
The spacious king-bed cabin comes with a fruit bowl, free soft drink minibar and spectacular views of the sea, sky and occasional whale. A bargain at € 160 one-way, and I arrive nicely rested despite the choppy crossing…
However my rest does not last long, and I awake in the company of my host, Mattias, a Buzz Adrin-obssessed Norwegian gardener who, after a series of personal and professional disasters, finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road in the desolate, treeless Faroe Islands, population only a few thousand, a wad of bills in his pocket and no memory of how he had come to be there…
But just when you think you’ve stepped into a page-turning procedural thriller, the clues linking the disparate storylines begin to point to an unearthly culprit.
The trouble is none of these narrative lines actually come together until the very end, in a rather anti-climactic finale. Yes, the themes of the ghostly boy sightings, strange deaths etc connect them but many of the main protagonists never meet; leading to a rather disjointed experience for the reader.
The flow of the novel is somewhat worsened by Sigurđardóttir’s tendency to over describe, sometimes in unnecessary detail: a habit that breaks up the flow of the action… lines such as “he opened the door but there was nobody in the cupboard, just an old mop that fell directly out and to the left of him” or “he suddenly realised it was cold in the room, he had arrived with his winter jacket on and so had opened the window as the air conditioning was switched off at this time of year. However, he had not taken his jacket off and so only now realised how cold the room had become” … ok! We get it: he opened the office window and now it’s cold – did that need a paragraph?
Maybe it’s a matter of personal taste, but for me the supernatural explanation felt like a plot cop-out. Despite the actual settings and supposedly creepy story I just didn’t find it scary. Maybe I’ve been immunised by too many Stephen King books as a child. Or perhaps the book simply lacks a truly shocking moment of horror: jump-scares along the lines of loud bangs, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ghostly glimpses, loud whispers etc may be entertaining enough in an okay horror/thriller film, but they certainly didn’t have me reaching for a cushion whilst reading this book.
The worse thing is, none of these characters are particularly likable. From Freyr, the psychiatrist who left his distraught wife after their son went missing, in case her madness was catching (a strange proposition from a mental health professional!), to the stereotypical ‘leave it to me I’m a man’ character of Garðar and the ineffectual and quite possibly bonkers Líf. Ultimately, I found it hard to care about their tribulations and survival… Brusque policewoman Dagny could have been interesting, but her character just seems to be making up the numbers here. A shame.
But this is just my opinion. All the reviews of this book (and the film, which I haven’t seen) have raved at its scariness and cleverness in combining Scandi-noir with the supernatural (it’s not unique in this by the way). One review screamed “A dark and terrifying MASTERPIECE!” on its headline. Steady on...
There have even been hysterical reports of people needing counselling after reading the book… really? I suspect if that’s the case they were probably in need of a few sessions before they read the book.
The best I can do is say I enjoyed some of the descriptions of the desolation surrounding both locales in the book, but as a horror/crime book? Nope, not for me…
So, another book that is more miss than hit as I continue the home straight and descend from the Arctic. Having now started the Faroese entry in my journey ‘Buzz Aldin: What Happened To You in All The Confusion?’ I have a much better feeling that this is one of those books – quirky and unique – that I will savour until the final page. But more of that later…
I take a bus down the east coast (there are plenty of them) to the port of Seyðisfjörður. From there I take the rather luxurious overnight ferry to Faroe Islands, leaving at 8.00pm and arriving at 3pm the next day into the Faroese capital Tórshavn, boasting a population of 13,000. The MS Norröna, which departs once a week, appears to have aspirations to be a luxury liner – boasting restaurants, cafes, a cinema, shopping centres and free wifi (sadly, the swimming pool and hot tubs are closed for winter).
The spacious king-bed cabin comes with a fruit bowl, free soft drink minibar and spectacular views of the sea, sky and occasional whale. A bargain at € 160 one-way, and I arrive nicely rested despite the choppy crossing…
However my rest does not last long, and I awake in the company of my host, Mattias, a Buzz Adrin-obssessed Norwegian gardener who, after a series of personal and professional disasters, finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road in the desolate, treeless Faroe Islands, population only a few thousand, a wad of bills in his pocket and no memory of how he had come to be there…
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