We, The Infected

I need to read this novel again, but my first time through - particularly in the first third - it gave me a real sense of horror. The idea that someone you love can die - this is an uncomfortable and ever present reality. The idea that they can be taken from you and then come back - maybe - this to me is really horrific. When the dead come back, is it really your loved one and they are just unable to come back all the way? Is it just some shadow of your loved one? Is it just something else inhabiting the corpse of your loved one? Or is it just your loved one's corpse being re-animated with no real "soul" being present?

What do you do with your love? You can't love your re-living only part way. You desperately would want your loved one to return and either you believe it is them and love them in that fashion or not. The uncertainty of this would be excruciating for me. As I began to identify with the characters in this story, a real sense of horror crept into me.

I am still digesting the fascinating different "flavors" of love for the re-living that JAL portrayed in this story - the contrasts between how Mahler and his daughter loved Elias, and between how David and Elvy reacted to theior situations. It is mainly to study these things that I want to read this novel again.

I have mixed feelings about HtU. I very much like the topic of the story, and I follow you fully on this:

Wolfchild wrote:I am still digesting the fascinating different "flavors" of love for the re-living that JAL portrayed in this story

Still, the multiple parallel plots, and the unanswered questions rendered me a bit puzzled, as I wrote in the Zombie Håkan thread:

drakkar wrote:

johnajvide wrote:... the question of balance is also very important to me. A satisfactory reading experience should end with a feeling that everything in the book that you are now putting aside has been balanced out.
(Of course you can also strive for an unbalanced ending, with questions unanswered and narrative threads hanging loose. I did this on purpose in Handling the undead, and maybe it wasn´t such a wise decision.)

Even if it's off topic, I can't resist commenting on that.

My experience when reading Handling The Undead was that the end, with its unanswered questions and loose narrative threads, in a way were backfiring on the story.
So because of this, I ended up slightly confused, and I also felt a slight lack of focus and "body" in it. As if something was missing.
Luckily I had the epilogue Sluthanteringen - Final Handling at hand, which is more tightened up and focused towards the end (on purpose?). That relieved me with a fundament for the whole story, and it also added depth to it.

Just my to øre.

This book is available in English?

Yes: Amazon.com

sauvin wrote:This book is available in English?

It's been available in UK for a long time, here is the page on Amazon.co.uk.

I should add that I haven't read it myself and there are some mixed reviews on the page above.

According to this page 'Harbour' is released as a hardback on 30th September this year...

Wolfchild wrote: Is it just something else inhabiting the corpse of your loved one? Or is it just your loved one's corpse being re-animated with no real "soul" being present?

This story certainly has many topics for discussion. Having just finished it a couple of days ago much of it is still sinking in. The thought of a soul returning to its body yet being trapped inside, unable to communicate, unable to affect it's sorroundings, only able to watch with no control over anything certainly seems like some kind of purgatory to me.

moonvibe34 wrote:This story certainly has many topics for discussion. Having just finished it a couple of days ago much of it is still sinking in. The thought of a soul returning to its body yet being trapped inside, unable to communicate, unable to affect it's sorroundings, only able to watch with no control over anything certainly seems like some kind of purgatory to me.

This is my take also. JAL paid homage to Dante's Divine Comedy in LdRKI, so why not continue? The Undead were able to communicate very rudimentary, so I also was thinking of some kinds of physical ghosts when I read the book. If you can say that ghosts are souls not able to find rest, then the Undead are physical equivalents to ghosts, whith the unresting souls trapped in their old bodies.

drakkar wrote:

moonvibe34 wrote:This story certainly has many topics for discussion. Having just finished it a couple of days ago much of it is still sinking in. The thought of a soul returning to its body yet being trapped inside, unable to communicate, unable to affect it's sorroundings, only able to watch with no control over anything certainly seems like some kind of purgatory to me.

This is my take also. JAL paid homage to Dante's Divine Comedy in LdRKI, so why not continue? The Undead were able to communicate very rudimentary, so I also was thinking of some kinds of physical ghosts when I read the book. If you can say that ghosts are souls not able to find rest, then the Undead are physical equivalents to ghosts, with the unresting souls trapped in their old bodies.

But having the re-living just reflect the emotions of the living around them, it calls into question whether each re-living really has its own identity. What would a re-living be then without living around them? This argues against them really being inhabited by the real souls of the departed - or at least not the real personalities. How is a personality distinct from a soul in this context?

Wolfchild wrote:But having the re-living just reflect the emotions of the living around them, it calls into question whether each re-living really has its own identity. What would a re-living be then without living around them? This argues against them really being inhabited by the real souls of the departed - or at least not the real personalities. How is a personality distinct from a soul in this context?

I don't see personalities and souls as being two separate entities. I got the impression that when a re-living was in more of an isolated situation like Elias and Tore (when Tore came home) that the bodies were carrying out subconscious desires/thoughts from the soul inhabiting them. When significantly outnumbered by the living, the souls hold on the body seemed to diminish or disappear completely. It's almost as if the bodies of the re-living were vessels in need of thought to power them and the thoughts of the living were stronger than the thoughts of the souls. ofcourse these are just some immediate thoughts. more discussion will shed much light on these subjects I'm sure.

Let us say that my feeling about this was lost souls, or souls in peril, is just because this is the closest fit to my general point of view.