The Invisible (review)

"It was on one of the first days of May that Hilmer Eriksson discovered he had become invisible." Teenaged Hilmer is confused as well as invisible, unable to remember much about his life or to make contact with anyone. When Detective Fors from the nearest town's police force comes to Hilmer's rural Swedish village to investigate the boy's disappearance, Hilmer's spirit attaches himself to the policeman, tagging along as the officer interrogates Hilmer's family, girlfriend, and acquaintances in hopes of finding the missing boy alive. This Swedish import is at its best when it's floating along with Hilmer, echoing his fragmented assessments of his state and offering quietly haunting judgments ("The invisible ones stumble along next to us, legions, cohorts, armies of invisible lives"). The book is also effective in its refusal to idealize its rural setting: it roots the crime in a wave of neo-Nazism and violent xenophobia among the youth, a tendency that the local burghers are trying to brush under the carpet lest it interfere with their plans to restore the economy by enticing German tourists. Ultimately, though, too much of the plot is adult-centered, focusing on Detective Fors and his colleagues, and the largely cool, unemotional prose of the police procedural diminishes reader sympathy. Nonetheless, some teens will respond to the unusual story and its shocking turns, finding it a bridge to cerebral adult detective fiction.