By Loka Kanarp & C/M Edenborg,translated by C/M Edenborg & Martin Tistedt (Borderline Press)
ISBN: 978-0-99269-724-2
If you thought “Scandi-Crime†was an impressive tweak on an old genre, wait until you see what our northern cousins can do with horror…
Resurrecting the classic ghost story in this seductive and compelling lavish two-colour hardback tome, husband-&-wife team Carl-Michael Edenborg and Loka Kanarp have concocted a sharp, sweet and sour compote of dark desire and chilling craving in their account of a slumbering supernatural force and its appalling allure for two troubled and unhappy girls…
Deeps in the woods a ramshackle edifice awaits as, nearer town and selfish, judgemental, facile modern civilisation, sisters Elsa and Fredrike grow increasingly uncomfortable with their new foster parents.
The smugly sanctimonious old poseurs are delighted with the idea and their roles as guardians – and especially in the reactions of their equally shallow friends and neighbours – but really don’t seem that invested in the recently-bereft children in their charge…
Unhappy to be the star exhibit at a garden party, the girls soon sneak off and wander into the wilds on the edge of town. They’re heading for a strange place Elsa heard about at school. They really shouldn’t go in. All the kids say it’s haunted…
The deserted domicile is vast: a procession of bleak and empty rooms where the previous inhabitants seemingly disappeared in the middle of a coffee klatsch…
As they idly roam together, the bare boards suddenly break beneath them and Elsa falls into a darkness far deeper and longer than the mere gap between floors. The hole is bigger than the house and even after climbing down on a rope Fredrike cannot touch the bottom…
Dejectedly returning alone to her foster parents’ home she tries to explain what has happened but is cut short when Elsa saunters in. She is not the same.
For one thing, she is cruel and mean and bullying, but the real kicker is at supper when a cutlery mishap proves the elder sister is no longer even human…
Of course, the pompous, self-opinionated adults notice nothing, and later as Fredrike cowers in bed looking at photos of happier times, the thing that looks like Elsa creeps in and offers to show her secrets and surprises if she will return to the ruined house with her…
Author, publisher and editor Edenborg (My Cruel Fate) runs his own publishing house – Vertigo Forlag – and co-wrote Hungerhusetwith graphic novelist Kanarp (another sterling alumni of the Comics Art School of Malmö whose previous works include Pearls and Bullets and To My Friends and Enemies) to satisfy their own love of suspense-horror movies.
Their passion is our happy windfall as this sublimely seductive and truly beguiling mystery unfolds in ways both uneasily familiar and intensely original…
If being simultaneously unsettled and delightfully satiated is your particular meat, Hunger House is a dish you will never regret ordering.
© 2014 Loka Kanarp & C/M Edenborg.