Lost Village

Good solid thriller. Nothing earth shattering or to remake the genre, but entertaining with the right amount of spooky.

The Swedish writer Camilla Sten wrote The Lost Village: A Novel about a former mining village in remote rural Sweden, where the population was found to have vanished in August 1959. In August 1959, Swedish police found a baby in the abandoned school, and a woman was stoned to death at a lamppost. The rest of the village population seems to vanish. The former mining village is named Silvertjärn. The book was translated from Swedish by Alex Fleming. The novel appears to be setting up the premise of a “found footage” horror movie (Cateridge 109). The main character of the novel, Alice Lindstedt, is a filmmaker who is leading a film crew to create a project based on the abandoned village of Silvertjärn in the early 21st century. The novel has several chapters set in the 1950s. Lindstedt’s grandmother was from Silvertjärn. Lindstedt’s grandmother’s mother, father, and sister vanished with the rest of the village. Lindstedt’s great-grandmother is the main character of the section of the novel set in the 1950s. Lindstedt’s girlfriend also has a connection with Silvertjärn. The film crew believes they are alone in Silvertjärn, but they are not alone. Sten’s novel, The Lost Village, is a well-crafted and haunting horror novel about the impact of a desperate community's quest for meaning and its effects on future generations. Works Cited: Cateridge, James. 2015. Film Studies for Dummies. Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Kindle.

Interesting read. Spooky.

I wasn't sure how I would rate this book for a while. At times, it felt like it was dragging a bit, and I couldn't stand the main character, so I was thinking maybe 3 stars. But I was reading it at 4 AM and my heart was pounding because the atmosphere was just so well described, and I thought - okay, maybe it's more than 3 stars. 3.5 stars? idk.

I picked this book up because it made me think of the podcast Limetown, which I adore. From the beginning when they introduced the past scenes, I sort of figured out what was happening (not the specifics, but the overall jist of it). And I figured out the twist about the abandoned baby's secret identity and all that pretty early on as well, so none of that was really a surprise. The main character was the actual worst, and I just wanted her to go ahead and die most of the time, and I didn't love the main character in the past scenes either.

I definitely liked a lot of the supporting characters though, especially Emmy. She just seemed so feisty, and tbh, I understand a lot of what she went through trying to support someone through a major depression and ending out being drained because of it. I also spent a lot of time reading the book thinking about genetics because once it was revealed that Tone had a history of psychosis, that was when I figured out that big mystery. I'm not sure what I think about this book's portrayal of mental health. It wasn't like I hated it or anything, but idk there was just something I didn't love about it either.

What really made me give this book 4 stars on GR is the atmosphere, and how they made everything super spooky. Even though I was just reading (in the middle of the night, which may not have been the best idea), I was fully expecting something to jump out at me from the page or something. It don't normally read scary stories, but this was great in that regard. Now, if only I didn't hate half the characters lol.

Definitely a thriller. In two time periods but the same location. A young woman brings a filming crew to a deserted Swedish village, to make essentially a fundraising film so that she can investigate the strange happening there in 1959. Her grandmother’s family and the rest of the village just vanished one day and nobody knows what happened to them. We hear about things Now and Then. Things get very tense by the end. Maybe more of a thriller than I prefer, but very well written.