The Night Guest

What if Long Covid were a horror novella? That's not the root cause here (which turns out to be a darker, more human plague), but the opening pages will resonate emphatically with anyone who's ever suffered a debilitating fatigue-based condition -- the soul-crushing tediousness of waking up every every every every morning to overwhelming tiredness and body aches, the repeated suggestions of chirpy acquaintances and bored doctors to just try exercise, vitamins, see a shrink, or whatever, and on and on. But from the exhausted but witty narrator's opening perspective in her new doctor's office to her increasingly desperate, paranoid, and finally horrified attempts to learn what's wrong with her, Knútsdóttir spins a well-paced and always show more tightening narrative that grips you until the final twist. It's a short work but brilliant, particularly for anyone who has ever flailed futilely at either this aspect of healthcare systems or the underlying driver of the supernatural plot that's revealed by the end. show less

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Hildur Knutsdottir'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 show more 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?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm always down for a psychological horror read. This one has a strong message about misogyny at its core. I think that is what powered me past my disappointing reading experience.

Iðunn's world is a very familiar, quotidian one of tedious work, unfulfilling relationships, and family pressures that might or might not be external. Like so many, maybe every, female of my acquaintance, she's a poor sleeper. This has multiple negative effects on a person's life. Iðunn tries to make changes in her sleeping deficits with a fancy new kind of wearable multiple-axes tracking device.

The promised data on her sleeping patterns tells a story that does not make sleep come any easier. If anything the data scares her more; and the device itself seems to be making her life, not only her sleep deficit, much worse.

Iðunn's sense of crushing responsibility for every single thing in her life is not unfamiliar to me. It's just not something I think is always an external pressure as Iðunn thinks it is. No matter; her responses to the world are the story, so putting aside my sense of her emotional immaturity, I travel down the unhappy trail with her. Why is she, for want of another term, sleepwalking? Why does her body acquire wounds during her unconsciousness? If it isn't sleep, what is this state and why is it part of her nightly experience that is unavailable to her daylight mind?

I was ready to quit the read when animal harm entered the chat. I was perfectly happy to follow the deteriorating sense of control over her body and mind; it seems to me to be an excellent metaphor for being a woman in a misogyny-drenched world. I'm very much not down with harming creatures that can not adequately defend themselves, when it's done for cruelty's sake most especially. In this case it did nit feel to me to be more than an intensifying trope; it did not come from something within Iðunn that was just bursting out of her in a horrible way...see The Wasp Factory for an example of what I mean by that.

I decided to trust the eminent Mary Robinette Kowal, a personal favorite creative talent, whose translation of the text felt very smooth and organic and unlike I was reading a story at an extra remove. That often happens to me, even in excellent translations. This story isn't ever going to be a five-star read to me, thought I, but it's way better than average.

Then...the ending.

Three and a half stars. No more, no less. show less

A woman wakes up tired, with unexplained injuries and thousands of extra steps logged onto her smartwatch. Night after night, she grows increasingly exhausted and increasingly desperate to find a solution, from locking her front door with a padlock to begging her doctor for sleeping pills. It's once she follows her smartwatch's night route that she discovers how gruesome a secret her night ramblings hide.

The premise of this novella is promising and it began well, but never gave any explanation or motivation for the gruesome crimes, which began with cats and moved right on to people. Good horror has to establish a reason and a logic of its own and this tale, told from the possessed woman's point-of-view, depended on that character show more withholding information from her own thoughts. A few more drafts, another fifty pages and a lot more thought and this would have been a good story. show less

Y’all, #spookyseason is officially upon us, and while I’ve been fairly quiet for most of this year, I’m hoping to use my favorite time of year to kickstart my account again. There are so many great books coming this season, as well as plenty on Mt.TBR, that I’m looking forward to sinking my literary teeth into.

Kicking things off is Hildur Knútsdóttir and her deliciously creepy THE NIGHT GUEST, translated from the Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal, out today from Tor Nightfire.

This book had me at page one, as our protagonist Iðunn is at a new doctor’s office, trying to discover the root of her constant fatigue. As someone with a chronic illness who suffers from mysterious fatigue myself, this immediately put me on edge. As show more Iðunn‘s sleep patterns become more and more erratic, it becomes less and less clear whether everything is in her head, or if there is actually something more to her restlessness. And where is Iðunn traveling to every night while she’s sleeping?

Knútsdóttir’s writing is concise and razor sharp via Mary Robinette’s translation, while also leaving plenty of room for the reader to imagine what horrors could be lurking around the corner. This is a fairly quick read (I read it in just a couple of hours), but nothing about the story feels rushed. This is yet another great addition to Nightfire’s growing library of fantastically creepy books they’re publishing.

A huge thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for an advanced electronic copy in exchange for an honest review.

QOTD: Spooky Season. Yes or no? 🎃💀👻

🏷️ #hildurknútsdóttir #hildurknutsdottir #maryrobinettekowal #thenightguest #tornightfire #netgalley #horror #bookreview #bookstagram #book #bookworm #bookdragon #bookintranslation #translation #iceland🇮🇸 #🇮🇸 #horrorbooks #amreading #amreadinghorror #pubday show less

I loved this. But the cats, for the kind of person who is going to relate to and love this book, the cats are what make this actual horror. How dare you. Otherwise this is hilarious and creepy and just right for a childless cat lady. (I'm not childless, but with nine current cats I am claiming cat lady).

This was really more of a short story. The incredibly short chapters almost had me laughing a little bit. Like one word or one sentence. SPOILER: This is about a woman who starts off as tired, but then eventually starts waking up with bruises. She gets a watch and she wakes up and has 48,000 steps. And it just gets weirder from there. Waking up with bruises. She sets a video camera and the video shows her waking up and leaving. Just really weird stuff! Come to find out, she's killing all the cats in her neighborhood. And then captures and kills 2 guys, someone she's dating and someone she was having an affair with. And it sounds like it was her dead sister that was making her do it. Kinda a weird ending to a weird little story. But I show more was still entertained by it! show less

The mystery and the rising sense of dread had me racing through this one in just a couple of hours, desperate to know how it ends. The horror that had been building throughout the book started to pull together in the last few pages and then...the book stopped with no payoff. It's so disappointing since another five or ten pages to give the story a true ending would have made this one a small masterpiece.

Received via NetGalley.