The Night Guest by Hildur Knűtsdőttir is a fast-paced thriller taking place in Iceland that left me with so many questions.
Iðunn has been waking up every morning feeling as though she ran a marathon. She is sore and completely fatigued. Some mornings she wakes with unexplained bruises, substances or blood.
Doctors are unable to help beyond recommending psychiatric help or sleeping pills. The latter seems to work at first until she begins noticing increased signs of violence. A tracking device reveals that she is walking to a particular spot every night.
Iðunn is afraid of the person she becomes once she falls asleep. Her sister’s death from two years earlier may be the cause, and it seems that it’s her sister creating the mayhem. She begins falling into a muddled state of sleeplessness as she traverses her days and interactions- trying to avoid sleep.
Spoilers ahead – I’m not sure if something is lost in the translation, but I finished this book with so many questions. I’m not sure why cats were the night person’s early targets. It was also unclear to me whether her sister killed herself or was drowned. Finally, the ending had me floundering- is she seeing her sister’s ghost, a hallucination or is it meant to be symbolic of the weight she’s felt since her passing. Did she kill her?
This book has a great concept and successfully showed its narrator’s disjointed state of mind.
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