Dead Weight

A woman leading a routine life is pushed by circumstance to violent extremes in this impressively subtle and slow-burning psychological chiller from Knútsdóttir (The Night Guest). Unnur is a 33-year-old business analyst living in Reykjavík when the unexpected appearance of a cat in her apartment turns her life upside down. The cat, whose name is Io, belongs to Ásta, an emotionally frail student who comes to claim her when Unnur responds to a lost pet notice on Facebook. Ásta believes that Io has sought refuge with Unnur because she doesn’t like Ásta’s new live-in boyfriend, Ragnar, and when she and Unnur discover that Io has just given birth to a kitten, they decide not to move her. So begins an unusual friendship in which Ásta drops by Unnur’s apartment several times a week, ostensibly to check on Io, but increasingly to confide intimacies about her life. Though Unnur projects a placid exterior, Knútsdóttir makes it clear that she’s a pressure cooker of building emotions, stoked by frustrations with work and her married lover. When the abusive Ragnar tries to end Ásta’s relationship with Unnur, she defends them both in a violent manner that is viscerally shocking despite being foreordained by the novel’s prologue. Anyone looking for character-driven horror with a very sharp edge will be thrilled. (May)