(Ég man þig, 2010)
In I Remember You, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir shows her usual panache for layered thrillers but infuses the plot with elements of the modern ghost story. The book follows two, seemingly unrelated storylines that reflect on one another and eventually reveal the mystery at its heart: the unexplainable vanishing of a young boy from his home in Reykjavík.
We follow the boy’s father, Freyr, a doctor who has relocated to the town of Ísafjörður after the collapse of his marriage in the wake of his son’s disappearance. When one of his patients, an elderly woman, commits suicide in an old church in a nearby village, Freyr finds himself digging into her past. He uncovers another unsolved case where a child went missing, only this one vanished sixty years ago. Meanwhile, further north, three people arrive on the shore of an abandoned fishing village: a young married couple and their friend – the widow of the fourth member of the group. In serious financial straits after the crash of the Icelandic economy, the three have concocted an ambitious yet desperate plan: They mean to renovate an old house in the village, hoping to turn it into a successful tourist destination.
Stranded in total isolation, tensions soon begin to mount among the trio of friends. To make matters worse, despite the impassable winter landscapes surrounding them, they are beset with an eerie sense that they are not alone in the boarded-up village.