Let the Right One In: A Novel [Paperback]

John Ajvide Lindqvist (Author), Ebba Segerberg (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: October 28, 2008

Let the Right One In Takes Top Honors at Tribeca Film Festival!

It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last---revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door---a girl who has never seen a Rubik’s Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night. . . .

Sweeping top honors at film festivals all over the globe, director Tomas Alfredsson’s film of Let the Right One In has received the same kind of spectacular raves that have been lavished on the book. American readers of vampire fiction will be thrilled!
 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“It’s easy to compare Lindqvist to Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman.”
---Dagens Næringsliv (Norway)

“Sweden's Stephen King...a classic tale of horror.”
---Tucson Citizen

“A brilliant take on the vampire myth, and a roaring good story.”
---Kelley Armstrong, bestselling author of Haunted

"Absolutely chilling. This page-turner grabs you from the onset and just won't let go. Vampires at their Anne Ricean best!"
---L. A. Banks, author of Bite the Bullet and the Vampire Huntress series

About the Author

John Ajvide Lindqvist's debut novel, Let the Right One In, was an instant bestseller in Sweden and was named Best Novel in Translation 2005 in Norway. The Swedish film adaptation, directed by Tomas Alfredsson, has won top honors at film festivals all over the globe, including Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. An American remake, Let Me In, written and directed by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves, was released in October 2010 to rave reviews. 

 

Lindqvist grew up in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm and the setting for Let the Right One In. Wanting to become something awful and fantastic, he first became a conjurer, and then was a stand-up comedian for twelve years. He has also written for Swedish television. He lives in Sweden.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Mti edition (October 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312355297
• ISBN-13: 978-0312355296
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (189 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

110 of 123 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A warning for those who have seen the movie version.... November 5, 2008

By W.Kim

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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).

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece of unsettling but deeply absorbing originality April 2, 2009

By Whitt Patrick Pond TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucky is he who has such a friend January 11, 2009

By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

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.