Finished
The Undesired by
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, a standalone psychological suspense thriller with supernatural elements. Like her previous Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series mystery
The Silence of the Sea, this has a timeline-switching double-mystery story which alternates between the present day, where formerly deadbeat-ish dad abruptly turned custodial single parent Ódinn (due to his severely estranged ex-wife's seemingly accidental death from a window fall, which his young daughter Rún is having nightmares about) is looking into the conditions of a 1970s era institutional home for juvenile offenders, and the actual goings-on at the 70s home. To complicate matters, the case was inherited from a co-worker who suddenly died of a heart attack in the office while looking into the mysterious deaths of two boys at the home, and there's the possibility that the ex-wife, the boys, and maybe even the co-worker are getting in on some haunting action, which Ódinn keeps trying to dismiss as nerves and anxiety, for Rún's sake.
Rather ambitiously, the story starts off with an Epilogue depicting Ódinn's final fate, with just enough hints to make one wonder if it really is due to supernatural vengeance, or a more human force at work. After that, each portion of the story slowly unfolds both what was suspected to be going on in both present and past (and drops clues about what was really going on, before the obligatory big reveals), in a slowly-building, creepily atmospheric way. The supernatural elements are mild and not quite ambiguous, with some apparent explanations provided for a few of the incidents, but others which seemingly can't actually be explained at all. And the obligatory twists and reveals are indeed mostly surprising but fitting, though a few are a little cliché and obvious, seemingly to disguise the nature of the more unexpected ones later.
Mild recommend if you think you might be into a psychological suspense thriller with a strong depiction of 1970s era institutional abuses and the domestic trials and tribulations of a newly single father in Iceland, both of which are rather dysfunctional. I don't really read much in the way of psychological supernatural suspense thrillers, being squeamish about creepy horror-ish stuff, so I've no real basis for judging, but this seemed like a competently-written but not outstanding one, with a rather niche subject matter appeal in an overall broad subgenre, and probably works best if you're already interested in stuff by the author or in the setting, and can get it on sale or from the library like I did. And there was a pronunciation guide for the Icelandic names in the front, which was a nice touch.
Probably the actual scariest thing in the book is this insight made in the course of investigating the institutional home conditions (apparently it was a common thing in 1970s Iceland, not to mention much of the rest of the world including Canada, to arbitrarily take young children away from disadvantaged families and turn them over to poorly-vetted total strangers to be housed in group homes of dubious responsibility, leaving life-long psychological scars):
Quote:
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But the saddest part was that something equally wrong-headed was almost certainly common practice now, though no one would notice for decades, by which time it would be too late.
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