Review by Win Wiacek

If you thought “Scandi-Crime” was an impressive tweak on an old genre, wait until you see what our northern cousins can do with horror…

Resurrecting the classic ghost story in this seductive and compelling lavish two-colour tome, husband and wife team Carl-Michael Edenborg and Loka Kanarp have concocted a sharp, sweet and sour compote of dark desire and chilling craving in their account of a slumbering supernatural force and its appalling allure for two troubled, unhappy girls.

Deep in the woods a ramshackle edifice awaits as, nearer town and selfish, judgemental, facile modern civilisation, sisters Elsa and Fredrike grow increasingly uncomfortable with their new foster parents. The smugly sanctimonious old poseurs are delighted with the concept and their starring roles as loving guardians, and especially in the reactions of their equally shallow friends and neighbours, but really don’t seem that invested in the recently-bereft children now in their charge. Aggrieved to be the star exhibit at a garden party, the girls sneak off and wander into the wilds on the edge of town. They’re heading for a strange place Elsa heard about at school. They really shouldn’t go in. All the kids say it’s haunted.

It leads to  a darkness far deeper and longer than the mere gap between floors within, and a transformation.

Author, publisher and editor Edenborg co-wrote Hungerhuset with graphic novelist Kanarp (another sterling alumni of the Comics Art School of Malmö) to satisfy their own love of suspense/horror movies.Their passion is our happy windfall as this sublimely seductive and truly beguiling mystery unfolds in ways both uneasily familiar and intensely original. If being simultaneously unsettled and delightfully satiated is your particular meat, Hunger House is a dish you will never regret ordering.