This novel is like the song of a Siren, impossible to resist its beauty. A masterpiece by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist.
Who holds in his hands “Harbor” is reading something beyond the narrative. Lindqvist tells an idea that undermines the borders of the book
itself and carries the reader to perceive something epic, something that surrounds all managing to be both alluring and frightening and both magical and mysterious. The mystery here is a spirit who haunts the book: invisible but always present.
The charm imprinted in the content is as powerful as the sea, it overwhelms like a storm surge, with moments from which you’re dragged with force. This charm invites with the same calm of blue water under the sun, you dive into the life of the protagonist Anders and soon you will find yourself to sink into it, surrounded by the insistent deep mystery that will become more and more obscure.
“Harbor” is so engaging as to be disarming: you turn the pages like under a spell. It is composed of indecipherable beauty and it’s driven by a provocative suggestion. It is as beautiful as a song that tells of epic deeds. It’s a story that you will never tire to listen to. That’s what “Harbor” is, like an enchanting popular ballad where the story is immersed in another story, which has roots in an even older story and all is written in a magical way.
It is the story of a life inside other lives, other worlds within worlds and a narrative into a narrative that explores the immensity of 
the sea, the smallness of human, the power of magic, the danger of the dark and occult forces who live by our side but that do not belong to us. All this dipped in an anguished romanticism and in a passionate despair. Here, the horror finds its personal poetry.
As in the short story collection “Let the Old Dreams Die” (also titled “Paper Walls”), Lindqvist tells of a daily life that clashes with a supernatural reality that goes back from unknown depths for crashing on human reality.
Readers are warned, from the first pages you will find yourself swimming in a ghostly, frightening, powerful immensity. This is a black ballad where the gloomy woods are much more frightening and deeper than you can imagine. “Harbor” is a dark fairytale able to win a corner in your heart. Forever and ever.
“The sea knows no limits,
makes no concessions.
It has given us everything and
it can take everything away from us.
To other gods we send our prayer:
Protect us from the sea”.
J. A. Lindqvist
Images in the article:
image 1: cover by Macmillan Publishers
image 2: Lindqvist, from J. A. Lindqvist offcial site
