Customer Reviews

Let the Right One in

5 star:		(123)
4 star:		(53)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Let the Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindovist. has one fantastic element: vampires. It's set in a suburb of Stockholm, on a social housing development that has become a sink estate. It's a sad place, full of aimless people. The people with responsibility - teachers, policemen, parents, are, for the most part, trying to do the right thing. They've got good intentions.

The book has a huge cast of characters with the major division between adults and children, each subdivided into the successful, more or less, and the failures, with a further division into victims and victimizers. The book opens with a bullied child, Oskar, who fantasizes about becoming a mass murderer. He meets Elli, a child vampire. The predictable does not happen.

Many of the adults on the estate are as powerless as the children - lonely, middle aged and elderly alcoholics, unemployed or working at minimum wage jobs. They are presented with a moral choice similar to that of the children: even if a victim, one can refuse to victimize others. (And that is the major freedom the characters in the book have.)

An earlier reviewer said he/she wasn't sure if this was belonged in horror... it's horror in the same way that Henry James' ghost stories fit the genre. It's mainstream/literary/horror, a book that crosses boundaries. I think genres are more useful for finding a kind of reading than describing a book - essentially, this is a very good book that people who read horror and people who would never consider reading horror would both like. It doesn't rank highly on the 'feel good factor' but it has a surprisingly happy ending -- one of those 'happy endings' that is about as happy as, all things considered, an ending can be.

I loved it - and think it's one of the best books I've read in the past year or so.

The novel, (I've a used copy of the UK translation) is painted on a much broader (encompassing and developing characters that were quite secondary in the film), far wilder and much scarier. Perhaps it's the actress, but the cinematic Eli seems very human at times. In the book, you never forget that she's essentially inhuman.

The author has an interesting knack for making even the most reprehensible characters (worse than the vampire) sympathetic, including a zombie pedophile, sadistic violent children, and a crew of pathetic alcoholics.

I only wish the translator's prose style wasn't so plain, the story could definitely use a little juicing up - not in terms of plot, so much as language.

The current film adaptation's stays close to the first half of the book (though for reasons of emphasis, much has been condensed, compressed, combined and left out - esp. the supporting characters - who add a lot to the original story) up to about the halfway point in the story, when some disturbing possibilities hinted at by the author play out, taking the story in two potentially difficult to take scenes, into JT Leroy-ish, "The Heart is Deceitful Among All Things" territory.

Those interested in reading the book be forewarned. However if you can handle those elements, action and pure horror elements get more plentiful and far, far wilder in the second half of the novel. It's a far harder ride than the movie.

In a way this is a great response to the surfeit of Buffy imitators on the popular fiction shelves these days. After all you'd have to be in pretty f_@kin' dire straits to let someone as utterly "other" (not to mention lethal) as the book's Eli into your life. And Blackeberg (the public housing estate Oskar edures) ain't Sunnydale. It's gotta' enough monsters even without the supernatural ones. (Think, Hubert Selby-Lite, with Vampires).

I am not sure if "Let Me In" was truly a good book, or if it is because it is so different than much of the vampire fiction being published right now, but I found it fascinating. It is not for everyone - not so much for the violence (par for the course in these sorts of books) as much as the peek into damaged psyches. It's to Lindqvist's credit that he presents even the most revolting human beings as full-fledged characters and not just drooling, one-note lunatics. The vampire, Eli, is also that rarity in horror fiction - a sympathetic vampire who is by no means "good." Eli will attack and kill innocent human beings, yet still remains sad because of her loneliness; in this way, she reminded me of Miriam Blaylock in "The Hunger." Definitely recommended for fans of the weirder side of vampire fiction.

John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let Me In (aka Let The Right One In, depending on the edition) is absolutely one of the best novels of its kind that I've read in years. To attempt to categorize it as simply a horror novel or a vampire novel is not to give it its full due. The most apt comparison I can make is that it's something of a cross between Stephen King at his very best and, oddly enough, Henry Thoreau in that its characters all seem driven by "lives of quiet desperation".

For those of you who are wanting to read the novel after having seen the film version, there are a few differences from the film. It won't hurt to tell you that in the novel, Eli's guardian does not die at the hospital, and that there is another plotline involving other characters that was left out of the film entirely (it became irrelevant after the guardian's plotline was changed). But that said, you will not be disappointed. Everything that made the film what it was is in the novel and then some, with edges far sharper than in the film. The novel takes you in much deeper into the lives of the characters, where things are rarely black and white and even the most seemingly unsympathetic of them become at least somewhat sympathetic when seen from the inside.

While there are many characters and a number of plotlines going on, at the heart of the story are Oskar and Eli. Oskar is twelve, bullied, a lonely passive victim who fantasizes about revenge. You can see the seeds growing in him, see a future scenario of the sort you read about in the papers where the victim becomes the victimizer in a bloody act of unfocused rage. Eli is also twelve... sort of. And not a victim. Eli is a survivor, no matter what it takes. Above all things, this is a story about loneliness and the need to "let the right one in".

There is a lot of originality in this novel. While it's not much of a revelation to say that Eli is a vampire, it must be said that Lindqvist brings some new things to the vampire genre, things that I will not reveal. And the world of his novel is firmly grounded in its own reality, the world of Swedish suburbia, specifically Blackeberg, in 1982. Lindqvist shows us that even if you don't live in London or New Orleans or even Transylvania, there can still be things unknown moving about in the night.

In addition, Lindqvist imbues his world of Swedish suburbia with an atmosphere that matches, or perhaps shapes, the quiet desperation of its inhabitants. There is a mounting dread always in the background. The fear that something will happen. Or the fear that something won't happen. Dreams and hopes can be as gut-wrenching and torturous as fear. I liked this passage in particular simply for the way it suggests the threat of things unknown:

"The squirrel darts down the trunk of the oak tree, stops, listns. A siren, in the distance. The squirrel judges the sound to be not dangerous, irrelevant. It continues down the tree trunk. All day there have been people in the forest, dogs. Not a moment of calm and only now, when it is dark, does the squirrel dare come down out of the oak tree it has been forced to hole up in all day.
..The squirrel reaches the foot of the tree, runs along a thick root. It does not like to make its way over the ground in the dark, but hunger forces it on. It makes its way with alertness, stopping to listen, looking around every ten meters. Makes sure to steer clear of a badger den that has been inhabited as recently as this summer. He hasn't seen the family for a long time but you can never be too careful.
..Finally the squirrel reaches its goal: the nearest of the many winter stores it has laid up in the fall.
..Just as it picks up a nut between its paws it hears a sound.
..Danger.
..It takes the nut in its teeth and runs straight up into a pine tree without having time to cover over the store. Once in the safety of a branch it takes the nut into its paws again, tries to locate the sound. Its hunger is great and the food only some centimeters from its mouth but the danger must first be located, identified, before it is time to eat.
..The squirrel's head jerks from side to side, his nose trembles as he looks down over the moon-shadowed landscape below and traces the sound to its source. Yes. Taking the long way around was worth it. The scratching, wet sound comes from the badger den.
..Badgers can't climb trees. The squirrel relaxes a little and takes a bite of the nut while it continues to study the ground, but now more as a member of a theater audience, third balcony. Wants to see what will happen, how many badgers there are.
..But what emerges from the badger's den is no badger. The squirrel removes the nut from its mouth, looks down. Tries to understand. Put what it sees together with known facts. Doesn't manage it.
..Therefore takes the nut into its mouth again, dashes further up the trunk, all the way up into the very top.
..Maybe one of those can climb trees.
..You can never be too careful."

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the kind of fiction that unsettles you, that makes you look and keep on looking even when part of you wants very much to look away.

Vampire stories tend to come in two flavours -- either they're creepy horor stories, or celebrations of goth hotties tortured by their immortality.

But John Ajvide Lindqvist's "Let The Right One In" is neither kind or story. Instead this haunting, atmospheric Swedish movie is a poignant look at a very unique friendship between a young boy and a vampire child. His spare prose has a haunting poetic edge even in the violent scenes, and is littered with moments of pure creepiness and beauty.

A man and a young girl have moved into the apartment next to Oskar's. But he's more concerned with the savage bullies that attack him every single day.

But as he vents his frustrations by stabbing a tree, he sees a ghostly young girl named Eli, who informs him that she can't be his friend. She turns out to be as much of an oddball as Oskar -- especially since she only ventures out at night, smells like death, and is unaffected by the winter cold. But despite her odd greeting, the two strike up an innocent friendship.

At the same time, her servant Hakan is going around town killing young boys for Eli's sake, and trying to blackmail her into sleeping with him in exchange for blood. Oskar realizes that Eli is a bona fide vampire -- and not really a girl -- but doesn't intend to let that get in the way of their puppy love. Yet when Hakan's errands go horribly awry, Oskar finds himself to be the only person Eli can rely on.

Trust me, "Let the Right One In" has no sentimental ideas about children (even vampiric ones) -- they can be more violent than anyone, because they are more vulnerable. The adults are all distant and/or alcoholic, leaving the children to fend for themselves -- which makes the tender, clumsy connection between Eli and Oskar all the more striking.

The plot starts out slow, with Oskar expressing his anger and loneliness in violent fantasies, and Hakan being all creepy and pedophiley as he harvests blood for Eli. The story gradually grows tenser and more murky as the tensions grow more overpowering, leading to a gruesome clash in a cold swimming pool (with shattered glass "over the water like myriad white stars").

While Lindqvist's prose also starts out stark and spare, it becomes more dreamlike and haunting once Eli and Oskar start meeting at night. The words become more poetic ("Her fingers were long and slender as twigs), and even the brutality of Eli feeding off a teenage boy is written beautifully. Simultaneously, Lindqvist pares down the conversations between Hakan and Eli to mere brief exchanges, and thus keeping Eli's true nature a mystery.

And Lindqvist does a brilliant job with the vampiric angle. It's eerie rather than bloody or scary, and he manages to come up with some new twists (Eli's "dead" smell and matted hair). But this book's heart is the bittersweet, strangely innocent romance between Eli and Oskar -- they play with puzzles, laugh on the swings, and listen to each other through the walls.

And their moments of violence -- Oskar's rage and Eli's bloodthirsty feedings -- are only reflections that these children aren't meant to be out in the grimy daylit world. Oskar grows in courage and confidence thanks to Eli, and the lonely otherworldly Eli finds the one person in the world who really cares. Oh yeah, and there's the creepy Hakan, Eli's grotesque "guardian" who tries to starve the young vampire into having sex with him.

"Let the Right One In" is the sort of vampire novel that comes along only rarely, full of violence, darkness, beauty and a haunting wintry world of loneliness. Definitely a must-read.

Let the Right One In contains an amazing story that gets lost among a lot of unamazing stories. The main plot--boy meets vampire--is wonderful. Oskar and Eli have what I can imagine is one of the more realistic vampire/human relationships. It's not sugar-coated, but it still manages to warm your heart every once in a while. The mixture of coming-of-age sweetness and nightmarish horror is so natural and believable.

Unfortunately, though, this one practically perfect storyline ends up diluted, losing a little of its power because there's so much stuff going on, trying to distract you away. Almost every minor character has his or her own subplot, and I ended up feeling bogged down with all of it, hoping we'd get back to Oskar and Eli sometime soon. No subplot is nearly as interesting or compelling as the main plot, and most of the time, the subplots aren't even necessary. I haven't seen the movie, but from what I've heard, some of these subplots get trimmed down, and I kind of wish they had been trimmed down in the novel, too.

In the end, I wasn't quite patient enough to enjoy this novel fully, but I still found the relationship between Oskar and Eli to be compelling enough to keep me going through a lot of other, less-compelling subplots.

I can't believe they set this under "Romance", even if it does technically contain something like an adolescent romance. If one of the adolescents were over a hundred years old.

Seriously, this could be one of the most disturbingly gorgeous books I've ever read, and I have read a lot. It's not an American author writing it, it's a Swedish guy; and the translation I read was the British one, so maybe the flavor would be different for this edition; not sure. Anyways, the story - is sometimes gross (there's a lot of urine and other bodily fluids) and sometimes sublime (the choices you make for people, the things you do for love or freedom). It's so fantastic, so gorgeous, so perfectly wicked - this child vampire who doesn't bother to clean up, whose closest relationship is with a pedophile... the boy who gets beaten up so regularly he has a system in place to cope with wetting his pants... the pedophile who is not the one in power in his relationship, who does such awful things to protect his love... it's amazing. And it's got a GOOD ending, a satisfying one. I can say that without giving anything away.

I had such a difficult time reading it and it was so worth it.

Set in Sweden in 1981, LET ME IN provides a riveting, tense thriller revolving around a dead teen and a possible ritual murder spree. Add a pre-teen who hopes revenge has come for the bullying he's suffered and a strange new girl who moves in next door, who only comes out at night, and you have a vampire novel to rival Anne Rice's best: a tense thriller recommended for any general lending library where patrons request powerful characterization and vampire novels.

Okay, so this book is definitely NOT for the faint of heart. I enjoy dark, gritty stories and am not easily offended by normally taboo subject matter so that is perhaps why I was not put off by this story as a few others were.

--Warning, the following contains some spoilers--
If you're looking for a light read, a sweet romance, kick-a$$ vampires you can idolize then find another book. There are no completely good nor completely bad characters in this book. Yes some are waaay worse than others but somehow the author manages to rouse a hint of sympathy for the most despicable characters--of course I'm speaking of Hakan here. Normally in books, movies, etc., these types of characters are the one-dimensional "evils" but the author gives a depth to these people that reminds us that no one is completely good nor completely bad. I found it rather disturbed me that I could feel any sort of sympathy for a pedophile like Hakan, even though my sympathy was very slight. I think most people want to demonize such individuals and to think of them as anything but pure evil is extremely difficult. I know it was for me, not that I'm saying "poor Hakan" now or anything (although the man was clearly sick) but the way the author portrays these characters really makes a person think and re-evaluate their emotions on these issues.

To me, this story felt more as if it were showing the "evils" of real life--the suffering individuals go through each day battling with different problems--as being much more frightening than a potential vampire swooping down on you in the night. Normally I do not care for stories about children but Oskar and Eli were extremely captivating characters.

Oskar was such a realistic character and should serve as an eye-opener to people regarding the potential emotional damage caused by bullying (layered on top of broken home issues). Perhaps Oskar would never have harmed anyone in his life, but I couldn't help but think the poor boy's psyche could have easily fractured further leading him to one day bring a rifle to school and opening fire. I liked the fact that he gained some confidence but did NOT turn completely confident nor into a super bad-a$$ who kicked everyone's butt and sent the bullies running. That's fantasy--not reality. What terrible things he may do in the future (for Eli's survival) is uncertain but the reader can speculate. We know that he will help Eli out of love but that doesn't make the idea of murder less severe does it? I also can't help but wonder about their future. If Oskar does not become vampire (since he says he doesn't want to be, but just wants to be with Eli) will the relationship become romantic as he gets older and starts having sexual urges? Will it be a sort of Hakan-Eli type relationship only this time sweeter and mutual? Even though there's a certain love there, I really don't think this is a happily ever after type of ending for those two. And I don't think it's meant to be.

What led me to give this book 4 stars rather than 5 was a few reasons. For one, as others have mentioned there are a lot of side characters and sub-plots that seem unnecessary to me. I did enjoy Virgina and Lacke's relationship quite a bit though.

Another thing that bothered me--unless I somehow missed the explanation--was how the heck Eli actually became a vampire. Was this told or did I accidentally skip a page? I assume it had something to do with that creepy guy who cut off Eli's "boy parts" (which wasn't explained why that happened either). Was Eli the subject of some sort of ritual that turned him that way, a primitive genetic experiment (it's mentioned about a virus in the blood), or were the two creepy guys vampires and turned him for kicks? I'm assuming the last one since the guy who cut off Eli's parts drank the blood. But it's not explained. Also, why do cats hate the vampires so much and attack them? If anyone knows Stephen King's "Sleepwalkers" I found that aspect of the story similar but it was never explained why cats had the irresistible urge to attack vampires. All of those things just left me scratching my head a bit.

Also, the scene with vampire/undead Hakan in Tommy's basement seemed a little unnecessary in my opinion. Speaking of which, what was he exactly? Virgina turned vampire but Hakan was acting like a zombie. Anyway, I can almost rationalize it as being Hakan's overwhelming obsession to finally "be with" Eli that drove him in that state. But zombie Hakan walking around with a hard-on attempting to find Eli and almost raping him in Tommy's basement? It's not something that makes me want to throw the book down, the scene is disturbing of course, but the attempted rape by a zombie-type creature seemed almost gratuitous in my opinion. The scene could have played out just as easily if Hakan simply showed up just trying to find Eli since he "loved" him.

Anyway, those issues aside, I still really enjoyed this book. It's one of the better books I've read in a long time and the actual plot is one of the most original as well. I haven't seen the film yet but I intend to soon. As I mentioned, this is not a light-hearted read and is definitely for adults only. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys darker stories. "Let the Right One In" is definitely a book that will make you think and feel in a way most other stories--vampire or otherwise--do not.

--EDIT--
I've just watched the film and I must say the book is MUCH better. I can understand why people who saw the film first might have been put off by the book. The movie version is sweeter and almost cute in how it portrays Oskar and Eli's relationship and it doesn't even touch on so many of the issues presented in the book. Hakan's character wasn't explored at all (his part was actually very small) and if I had not read the book, I would not have even known he was a pedophile and just wondered who was that random guy taking care of Eli. I probably would have liked the movie better had I not read the book but I would have definitely had tons of questions because the film doesn't explain anything and no depth is given to the characters except for Oskar and Eli. The random shot in the movie that shows where Eli's genitals had been cut off would have definitely been a WTF moment for me had I not read the book, the movie explained nothing about Eli's past. I suppose the movie was meant to leave the viewer questioning a lot of these things though. Bottom line: If you're not afraid of darker subject matter, definitely read the book rather than watch the film. It's a much more engaging story.

I heard this movie received excellent reviews, but did not get out to see it so on a whim I bought the book. I was sooooo pleasantly surprised as this is the absolute best vampire novel I have read in years.

The main character, Oskar lives in what seems like the Swedish version of the projects, he lives in a single parent home with his mom, his dad is a functioning drunk and he is bullied in the most horrible ways by his classmates on a regular basis. He daydreams about getting revenge on his tormentors, but ultimately he is afraid and ineffective until he meets the tiny enigmatic vampire that has moved into his building and falls in love.

The fleshing out of Oskar and the young vampire and the development of their relationship which helps build Oskar's personality and self confidence is beautiful. You really feel as if the author has been there in the very dark place Oskar lives in, and that he understands the deep emotional pit a victim lives in every day. A sad young boy has a monster come into his life, who is much less a monster than the humans he must deal with every day.

The other characters are also well rounded as this is no story with black and white, good and evil and simple bad guys. Practically everyone in this story is a victim, even Oskar's tormentors, but not everyone can be saved.

This is a horror novel, but also a coming of age novel and the ultimate fantasy of every "misfit" that ever had their face pushed in the dirt.