Oct 19 2007
A YA ghost story: The Invisible
The Invisible, a young adult novel by Mats Wahl and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was first published in Sweden and made into a movie there. A U.S. film version will open in April 2007.
It’s about Hilmer, a 15-year-old boy in a small Swedish town, who slowly realizes that he has become invisible and is believed missing. A police detective named Harald Fors arrives at school that very morning to investigate Hilmer’s disappearance. Hilmer grows frightened and realizes that he’s starting to forgett things including what happened to him two nights earlier.
Detective Fors suspects foul play by a group of skinheads. As Fors scours the village and interviews area residents for clues, he begins to piece together the puzzle of Hilmer’s disappearance. Meanwhile Hilmer waits to discover what has happened to him.
Teens and adults will appreciate how Wahl slowly gives us – and main character Hilmer – clues about what happened. While you and Dective Fors have your suspicions, it isn’t until the end that the author lets us know what really happened. The Invisible reminds me a little of the narration in Alice Seabold’s The Lovely Bones – slightly creepy but very unique. Teenagers will enjoy this murder mystery and find The Invisible a hard book to put down.
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