Harbor

This epic, scary and moving book is about Domarö, a fictive island in the Roslagen archipelago in Sweden, the people living there and their relation to a very cruel and very living sea. Lindqvist paints a very broad picture here, starting with legends and pacts made hundreds of years ago and leading up to the present generation of inhabitants, all with the secret truth about the sea as a major factor in their daily lives. This Lindqvist's fourth book is much more like Handling the Undead in scope and flavour rather than Let the right one in, but in my opinion it's much stronger. Where Handling the Undead didn't quite work once the action moved to a mythical level, Människohamn presents a sea more resembling a Lovecraftian god than show more anything - and pulls it off.

It's been a while since I read a page-turner like this. From the opening chapters where a child disappears from where it shouldn't even be possible, this book had me hooked. But not only is it scary, moving and thrilling, following the main character Anders in his numb refusal to accept his daughter's death and idealisation of her memory also has something pretty profound to say about parenthood. This book really got to me as a father as well as a reader. I highly recommend it. show less

I was so happy to see I had one Lindqvist's Harbor through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. I had been hearing a lot about the author and wanted to try one of his books, so it was great having a free advanced reading copy arrive in my mailbox, and only slightly passed the release date too...

I won't deny at first I was a little let-down when I realized the book doesn't exactly flow in chronological order. It's not that I don't like that sort of thing, but the author did such a good job of writing an engaging opening chapter that I was very disappointed when that story was abandoned for so many pages.

However, things begin to settle down eventually and the time shifting gives the reader a broader scope of the history of the show more archipelago, and ultimately it makes for a much more in-depth and memorable read. The writing is great regardless, so having the main story constantly interrupted with shorter stories didn't bother me at all.

To be honest, I found the ending to be a bit much. I won't spoil it for you, but I'll say it was bit over-the-top for me.

Still, I really liked the book. There is no question I'll go back and read through Lindqvist's previous books eventually, and I'll also be keeping an eye out for his future releases. Very enjoyable novel. show less

If H. P. Lovecraft lived in a day and age where writing a 500+ page novel was acceptable, he may have written something very similar to Harbor. If you’re not familiar with Lindqvist, as was I when I first started reading this massive tome, you may automatically assume that he’s a horror writer. Well, he is, but not exactly that. Lindqvist takes a horror trope and writes an engaging, sweeping, epic story around that trope, and how it affects real people.

In Harbor, we meet an isolated cluster of islands, its people, and a history of dissapearances to some unseen, underwater force. We have magicians who know real magic, a town surrounded by malevolent water, and two ghosts who ride a moped around and quote The Smiths. The narrative show more spans, mostly, three generations, but also occasionally takes a peek at times more ancient than that.

While undertaking a reading of Harbor may itself be a challenge, if you’re willing to dedicate the time to read its many pages, you will find not only a horror story that is approachable by readers on non-horror, but an interesting tale of people, both dead and alive. show less

I say I'm not much of a fan of paranormal books, but as with all of my absolute declarations on reading matters, there is an author out there who is destined to blow my prejudices out of the water. John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of those authors. Since the first of his books LET THE RIGHT ONE IN became an all-time favourite of mine, I've looked forward to each new release. HARBOUR, released last year, is a book I've been champing at the bit to read, but it should come with a warning - once picked up, mesmerising. I couldn't put it down. And it's a big book at 500 pages, so you might want to make sure that you've got supplies in before you start.

What starts out as a seemingly innocuous trip across the ice to the local lighthouse, ends with show more the vanishing of six-year-old Maja. Seemingly in the blink of her parent's eyes, she was there and now she's not. Despite extensive searches she's vanished. No footprints in the snow, no sound, no sight, no sign. Anders, her father, falls apart. His marriage fractures, his life stops. And two years later, he returns to the island to attempt to confront the despair, to drag himself out of spiralling downward trend of alcohol and hopelessness that his life has become. He returns to an island seemingly unchanged, to his grandmother and her partner, to a small, sheltered, enclosed community with secrets.

The paranormal aspects of HARBOUR surface fairly quickly after Anders returns to the island, and again I've found myself wondering what it is about this author that makes that work for me. Partially I think it's a lot to do with the suspense that Lindqvist builds into the story that he's telling. There are definitely aspects of a thriller about this book, as Anders tries again to discover what happened to his beloved Maja. There's also a wonderful ability to simply tell a story. This book weaves the tales of Maja, Anders, his grandmother and her magician partner into the story of the island community seamlessly. There is also a breathtaking sense of raw and honest human emotion, mixed up into the paranormal. There is profound emotion in Anders - regret, sadness, recrimination, grief, resentment and anger, but most of all unconditional love. Other characters often reflect or contrast aspects of his emotional state - but the islanders also demonstrate secrecy, protectiveness, deceit. Through it all, even through the realisation that perfection is often in the eye of the beholder, the pace of the story builds as does the pace of Anders' discoveries, understanding, and ultimately acceptance that his daughter may not have been all that he chose to see, but she remains exactly who he chooses to love.

Interestingly, unlike other books in this category that I've really struggled with, the paranormal aspect in this one appeared integral to the story - supporting the environment; part of the emotion, the culture, the area, the people. There was no sense that the paranormal was the "story" in its own right.

It is really that overwhelming sense of a story being told that works so well in HARBOUR, supported by raw, glorious emotion. Regardless of the hows, wheres or whys of what happens to the characters in the book; how they interact with the places, what sense of the "other" is bought to the reader's experience; there is a story underlying this that talks about humanity. Unconditional love in a struggle with the need to understand, explain, justify and absolve. The way that grief can control some, and is a catalyst for others. The nature of faith and love and meaning, and the consequences of all of them. Regardless of how much of the paranormal you are comfortable with, HARBOUR is a stark, beautiful, moving, confronting, sad, lyrical and emotional book. show less

The island of Domarö has a long and storied history, and tales are told of how the island slowly appeared to rise from the water and how the sea and the people lived in a strange sort of harmony. Anders and his wife Cecilia are two such people, living in a place know as the Shack -- a building of strange angles and drafty windows, but a nice little place right on the water -- built by his father Johan. One winters day, Anders and Cecilia, along with their daughter Maja, travel across the frozen waters to the lighthouse at Gåvasten, and while exploring the tower which seems to sprout from the very rock of the island, Maja disappears without a trace. No screams, no footprints, no signs of struggle. She simply vanishes.

Two years later, show more Anders returns to Domarö, trying to put his life back together after Cecilia left him. He returns to the Shack and soon begins feeling that he's not alone, that his daughter Maja is somewhere in the house, playing hide and seek. With the help of Simon, an old magician who has a romantic history of his own with Anders' grandmother Anna-Greta, Anders tries to piece together what he's been feeling inside the shack. But he uncovers darker tales that lie just beneath the happy surface of life on Domarö, tales of strange disappearances throughout the history of the island. As their stories comes to light, stranger events happen across Domarö, people turning angry for no reason or those who had disappeared suddenly re-surfacing on the island to wreak havoc. And Anders soon learns why the islanders fear the lighthouse at Gåvasten.

Unlike quite a few horror novels, "Harbor" isn't filled with blood and gore or terrifying nightmarish creatures presented to scare the wits out of the reader. Instead, it offers a fully-drawn background of Domarö, its inhabitants, and the lighthouse at Gåvasten. The history intertwines with the present, and as the reader uncovers the past, the horror of what happened and continues to happen slowly bubbles beneath the surface, creating tension that seems to permeate every page of the book. Plus, it includes subtle twists that makes the reader unsure of which characters to trust and what defines good and bad, making the horror aspect all the more effective. For fans of horror, this is a must read. show less

With Let Me In, John Lindqvist reinvigorated the vampire novel, managing to create a vampire character that simultaneously evoked both sympathy and terror. In Harbor, the author has done it again, creating a dark, spooky atmosphere, while also managing to capture the heartbreaking terror and panic of losing a child. Interspersing the present day with lots of back story provides the reader with a thorough and unique portrait of the characters while simultaneously holding the readers interest with well-written suspense.The final reveal doesn't fail or feel like a let down.

It's nice to read a horror novel without feeling like the writer is searching for ways to appeal to purely visceral frights. Without a doubt, Lindqvist should be show more counted among the great horror writers working today. show less

This read is an odd mix of the seriously creepy with its supernatural events and the strangely comforting with its numerous fisherman tales - they're so similar to the ones I heard as a child that I sometimes forgot what kind of book I was reading. I'm not the best when it comes to creepy ghost stories (I read most of this in the daytime), and Lindqvist is a master at depicting the bizarre and twisted (the "Smiths-guys" are just about the creepiest characters ever), merged so well with the realistic that the end result is even "worse" since you never know when the horror is just around the corner. It's well written and, although I have no idea whatsoever of what actually happened in the end, I did enjoy the road to the conclusion very much.