Hildur Knútsdóttir’s debut, The Night Guest, is the kind of cagey thriller that begs you to read it in a single sitting. That’s how I read the book, and Knútsdóttir rewards antsy readers who are rushing toward the story’s climax with plenty of stub-short chapters and blank pages that play up the drama of the plot.
It’s a story about an Icelandic woman who always wakes up feeling even more tired than she did when she went to sleep. There’s no medical reason for her weariness, or for the bruises and cuts that she wakes up with occasionally. As she explores her bizarre condition, the city of Reykjavik becomes the setting for a cat-and-mouse chase that could be nothing more than a cat chasing its own tail.
I whipped through this book, and if you’ve been having trouble focusing on a novel I’d easily recommend The Night Guest. It’s one of those thrillers that’s almost more difficult to not read—a dirty, messy little thriller that leaves plenty of its gory details to the reader’s imagination.