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Review: John Ajvide Lindqvist - Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) (2004)
This book was alright. It didn't really inspire any particular feelings in me other than mild interest. I didn't find it too frightening either, and I felt that it relied on a bit of shock horror that didn't really shock me. It was okay, but I wouldn't necessarily care to recommend it to anyone.
Spoilers.
Story
The story surrounds the happenings in a local town after a vampire arrives, unknown to most people. Oskar, a young boy, unknowingly struck a friendship with Eli, the vampire, who was presented as a young girl. Oskar was often bullied at school.
Eli lived with a man called Hakan who was a pedophile and in love with Eli. They had a weird relationship as Hakan was deeply devoted to Eli but Eli held him at a distance. Hakan would kill kids for sustenance for Eli.
Hakan was caught by the police, at which point he poured acid on his face in hopes of protecting Eli. However, he did not die. Eli did go to see him and try to suck his blood but was interrupted and Hakan became a kind of vampiric monster, deeply disfigured because of the acid burns, and only motivated by his lust for Eli. Hakan's story line ended with him as a disfigured flesh monster being killed by another citizen of the town, Tommy.
Meanwhile, Eli had also attacked a woman named Virginia but was interrupted. Virginia was hospitalized and became a vampire. She struggled mightily with her vampirism. At one point she planned to kill a distant friend for blood but was stopped when her lover Lacke was present. She was later taken to hospital and she had wanted Lacke to kill her. When Lacke refused, Virginia got the help of a nurse by asking her to open the curtains at which point Virginia burst into flames from the sunlight.
Back to Eli, she wanted to escape town and she did. However, she returned when Oskar was being bullied again. Eli killed the bullies, and then she and Oskar escaped.
A weakness of this book for me was that it spent a lot of time on the side characters that didn't matter much to me. Tommy, Johnny, Gosta, etc. There were a lot of names of people who I did not remember. I really only cared about the happenings relating to Oskar, Eli, Hakan, Virginia, and Lacke. And I think what attracted me more to these stories was that they were more about complicated relationships than just "bullies and victim" or "group of friends" etc. And they were all deeply affected by vampirism which was the cause of the happenings in town.
Oskar was drawn to Eli but Eli was determined to keep him away. Their story was often about Oskar trying to grapple with his fear and love for Eli, and Eli, though very old, still had the mindset of a child and so Eli's feelings towards Oskar were a mix of enjoying his company as a child would but also understanding the limitations. And in the end, their love for each other won out.
Hakan and Eli's relationship was very strange. Hakan was sexually attracted to Eli and deeply devoted, often referring to Eli as his beloved. I think Eli saw him as just an acquaintance that she could rely on. She clearly didn't love Hakan the same way and in several cases thwarted his advances. She needed him to be able to live their lives regularly; in public he was assumed to be her father and he also helped her lure victims. However, there was a reluctance to her relationship with him.
As for Virginia and Lacke, they were in a relationship but Virginia felt a bit unloved in that Lacke would never share his life with her. Things changed when she became a vampire. She began to avoid him a lot and decline his help. And that's when Lacke started to realize how he'd been keeping her at a distance and hurting her that way. Virginia revealed her vampirism to Lacke and asked him to kill her. He was understandably shocked and didn't want to kill her, so Virginia decided she'd do it herself. The nurse wouldn't move Lacke out of her room before killing herself so she had no choice but to kill herself with Lacke next to her.
As I mentioned, I thought that the book relied a bit too much on shock factor that didn't shock me. I expected that Hakan after his disfigurement would be one of the major sources of horror, particularly when he became vampiric and was a mindless flesh monster. I think it was hinted that even when being broken apart, his flesh would have a life of its own. Pretty freaky.
But I was thinking that maybe Eli being a vampire was supposed to be a point of shock. In the same way that Gone Girl is scary to men because they can't imagine someone looking weak having so much violence and aggression in them. Eli is presented as a young girl and is very capable of killing people and I can't help but wonder if that's why the story is supposed to be scary.
As I mentioned, I felt the Oskar and Eli relationship was the most important part of the story but it also didn't quite hit the spot for me. Oskar just wasn't very compelling to me. He was coming to terms with Eli's vampirism but he didn't really do deep thinking about it in a way that was compelling.
Writing
I was reading an English translation. I don't remember who the translator was unfortunately. But I didn't find the writing particularly compelling.
Characters
As I mentioned there were a lot of supporting characters that were mentioned but did not leave an impression on me and felt very extraneous. So I'm only going to talk about some of the characters.
Oskar
Oskar was our main character, a boy in a Swedish town and the victim of bullies at school. We first saw him taking out his anger on a block of wood in the forest. He later met Eli, whom he befriended. He noticed some odd things about her but didn't really think too much about it.
Oskar himself was a child of divorced parents. He lived with his mother and sometimes visited his father. He had a so-so relationship with his father. At one point, he'd visited his father but his father had a guest over and Oskar opted to walk home, probably feeling a little neglected. That being said, Oskar didn't connect particularly well with his mother either.
During the book, Oskar was pretty interested in getting with Eli, typical preteen stuff. Eli would try to rebuff him but in ways that were very strange and didn't make sense. But Oskar finds out that Eli is a vampire, and was a boy called Elias. Despite all of that, Oskar came to terms with liking Eli. To him, I think Eli was the only person who ever made Oskar feel like he was heard. Even his own parents didn't really see him for who he was, while Eli was always watching him and engaging with him.
Oskar gained courage from Eli and went against his bullies, attacking one of them and severely hurting his ear. However, after Eli left, the bullies wanted to get back at Oskar, trying to drown him.
The end of the book was only reported through third parties, but it was implied that Eli had come back to save Oskar, and after she'd killed the bullies, they ran away together.
Eli
Eli was the og vampire in this town. She arrived and was presented as a young girl, with Hakan as her father. Oskar and Eli struck up a friendship. Because Eli wasn't very well-versed with human customs, it wouldn't have occurred to her that Oskar was an outcast. So she didn't judge Oskar. She also learned about human customs from Oskar.
Eli noticed that Oskar was becoming interested in her and I think she was already trying to thwart him before he even made a move. Eli mentioned to Oskar that she was neither a boy or a girl, which confused Oskar. We learn that Eli was originally a boy who was turned into a vampire. I think he was implied to have been castrated, which was where the not-a-boy and not-a-girl part came from. After the reveal, Eli was referred to as "he" in the book. For continuity and because Eli presents herself as a young girl, I continue to use she/her for her.
Another strange thing was that Eli was stuck in the mind of a twelve-year-old, which is not something I tend to see in stories about immortals. You would think that just by virtue of experience, a being would grow old and mature. That's a thing that's not really explored well in the book. It was kind of hand-waved which I didn't love.
One thing I didn't mind was that Eli's powers were not really stated in detail. We know that she has superior physical prowess, requires blood to survive, and cannot survive in sunlight. Eli apparently had some powers of persuasion, as seen when she was trying to kill the old lady and influenced her to lie down and become relaxed. We also learned what would happen if Eli entered a room without being granted permission. She would begin bleeding from every orifice, which I guess would effectively kill her.
Eli eventually returned Oskar's feelings, though they didn't really do much other than cuddle and talk. As things became dangerous for Eli, she asked Oskar whether he wanted her to stay. If he didn't, she would leave forever. After deliberation, Oskar decided that he wanted to Eli to be around. She did stay, but at one point things got quite dangerous and she did leave.
However, she came back to save Oskar from bullies and they escaped together.
Hakan
Hakan was Eli's companion. He was a pedophile and in love with Eli. At the beginning of the book, he was luring young boys. He did have some internal conflicts about killing them, but he did kill them for sustenance for Eli.
Based on snippets of conversations we read between Hakan and Eli, there was conflict over this. Eli used Hakan's attraction to her as a way to use him and get him to kill for her. And we saw that Hakan didn't like killing but he did it because he was so obsessed with Eli.
Hakan had chloroformed a boy and was about to bleed him in a public washroom when he was found out by some adult men. Before they could catch a glimpse of him, Hakan poured concentrated acid over his face (he had it in a jar in his bag). He had intended to disfigure himself so that the authorities wouldn't be able to track Eli through Hakan.
Surprisingly, Hakan did not die from the acid, but he basically did not have a face and only had an eye. I think he intended to give his blood to Eli as one last show of his devotion and then die. However Eli was interrupted. Hakan tried to jump to his death to avoid becoming a vampire but he did become a vampire.
He became somewhat of a mindless zombie flesh monster. He'd made his way to Eli with the intention to rape her but Eli fought him off. He was eventually killed by Tommy.
Virginia
Virginia didn't really make it onto my radar until we were presented with Virginia's relationship struggles. She basically felt shut out of Lacke's life as she knew nothing about him.
She was attacked by Eli when leaving a conversation/argument (I don't remember) with Lacke, so Lacke was a witness to the attack and that was what stopped Eli from finishing the job.
I thought Virginia's transformation was very interesting because we got a practical look at vampirism. After putting the pieces together, Virginia figured out she was probably a vampire and craving blood.
She had intended to kill Gosta for blood but was stopped by the cats and also Lacke was there, and she didn't want to kill in front of him. Virginia was hospitalized and held down with straps. That's when she revealed the truth to Lacke. She also asked him to kill her by stabbing her through the heart which understandably shocked him.
Lacke fell asleep next to her. When a nurse came in, Virginia asked the nurse to take him out of the room without waking him, intending to kill herself. The nurse refused, so Virginia gave up and just asked the nurse to open the window so she would burn.
Lacke
Lacke didn't realize how much he took Virginia's presence for granted until she didn't want to see him. And that feeling persisted until her death. He realized how much she meant to him.
After Virginia's death, he wanted to tell people about her vampirism as it would explain the death but he felt that no one would believe him. He thought that ironically, Virginia was the only person who would have believed him.
Themes
I think the main explored theme was loving the grotesque. To someone like Oskar, who was an outcast anyway, who didn't really know what it was like to have a normal friendship, Eli was as good a friend as anyone. After all, Eli listened to him and gave him strength and protected him. As for Eli, she didn't really think too hard about it. She knew it was dangerous for Oskar and he might not like the lifestyle. But she ultimately let him make that decision.
As for Virginia and Lacke, Virginia herself had trouble accepting her present condition. She was a lot older than Eli was when Eli was turned so understandably it was hard to accept for her. She couldn't live with herself and she wanted Lacke to kill her. If it had to be anyone, it would be him. But he didn't want to do it, so she had to do it herself.
Overall
It was an okay book. Didn't really evoke any feelings in me unfortunately. I don't think the movie would interest me either.
Spoilers.
Story
The story surrounds the happenings in a local town after a vampire arrives, unknown to most people. Oskar, a young boy, unknowingly struck a friendship with Eli, the vampire, who was presented as a young girl. Oskar was often bullied at school.
Eli lived with a man called Hakan who was a pedophile and in love with Eli. They had a weird relationship as Hakan was deeply devoted to Eli but Eli held him at a distance. Hakan would kill kids for sustenance for Eli.
Hakan was caught by the police, at which point he poured acid on his face in hopes of protecting Eli. However, he did not die. Eli did go to see him and try to suck his blood but was interrupted and Hakan became a kind of vampiric monster, deeply disfigured because of the acid burns, and only motivated by his lust for Eli. Hakan's story line ended with him as a disfigured flesh monster being killed by another citizen of the town, Tommy.
Meanwhile, Eli had also attacked a woman named Virginia but was interrupted. Virginia was hospitalized and became a vampire. She struggled mightily with her vampirism. At one point she planned to kill a distant friend for blood but was stopped when her lover Lacke was present. She was later taken to hospital and she had wanted Lacke to kill her. When Lacke refused, Virginia got the help of a nurse by asking her to open the curtains at which point Virginia burst into flames from the sunlight.
Back to Eli, she wanted to escape town and she did. However, she returned when Oskar was being bullied again. Eli killed the bullies, and then she and Oskar escaped.
A weakness of this book for me was that it spent a lot of time on the side characters that didn't matter much to me. Tommy, Johnny, Gosta, etc. There were a lot of names of people who I did not remember. I really only cared about the happenings relating to Oskar, Eli, Hakan, Virginia, and Lacke. And I think what attracted me more to these stories was that they were more about complicated relationships than just "bullies and victim" or "group of friends" etc. And they were all deeply affected by vampirism which was the cause of the happenings in town.
Oskar was drawn to Eli but Eli was determined to keep him away. Their story was often about Oskar trying to grapple with his fear and love for Eli, and Eli, though very old, still had the mindset of a child and so Eli's feelings towards Oskar were a mix of enjoying his company as a child would but also understanding the limitations. And in the end, their love for each other won out.
Hakan and Eli's relationship was very strange. Hakan was sexually attracted to Eli and deeply devoted, often referring to Eli as his beloved. I think Eli saw him as just an acquaintance that she could rely on. She clearly didn't love Hakan the same way and in several cases thwarted his advances. She needed him to be able to live their lives regularly; in public he was assumed to be her father and he also helped her lure victims. However, there was a reluctance to her relationship with him.
As for Virginia and Lacke, they were in a relationship but Virginia felt a bit unloved in that Lacke would never share his life with her. Things changed when she became a vampire. She began to avoid him a lot and decline his help. And that's when Lacke started to realize how he'd been keeping her at a distance and hurting her that way. Virginia revealed her vampirism to Lacke and asked him to kill her. He was understandably shocked and didn't want to kill her, so Virginia decided she'd do it herself. The nurse wouldn't move Lacke out of her room before killing herself so she had no choice but to kill herself with Lacke next to her.
As I mentioned, I thought that the book relied a bit too much on shock factor that didn't shock me. I expected that Hakan after his disfigurement would be one of the major sources of horror, particularly when he became vampiric and was a mindless flesh monster. I think it was hinted that even when being broken apart, his flesh would have a life of its own. Pretty freaky.
But I was thinking that maybe Eli being a vampire was supposed to be a point of shock. In the same way that Gone Girl is scary to men because they can't imagine someone looking weak having so much violence and aggression in them. Eli is presented as a young girl and is very capable of killing people and I can't help but wonder if that's why the story is supposed to be scary.
As I mentioned, I felt the Oskar and Eli relationship was the most important part of the story but it also didn't quite hit the spot for me. Oskar just wasn't very compelling to me. He was coming to terms with Eli's vampirism but he didn't really do deep thinking about it in a way that was compelling.
Writing
I was reading an English translation. I don't remember who the translator was unfortunately. But I didn't find the writing particularly compelling.
Characters
As I mentioned there were a lot of supporting characters that were mentioned but did not leave an impression on me and felt very extraneous. So I'm only going to talk about some of the characters.
Oskar
Oskar was our main character, a boy in a Swedish town and the victim of bullies at school. We first saw him taking out his anger on a block of wood in the forest. He later met Eli, whom he befriended. He noticed some odd things about her but didn't really think too much about it.
Oskar himself was a child of divorced parents. He lived with his mother and sometimes visited his father. He had a so-so relationship with his father. At one point, he'd visited his father but his father had a guest over and Oskar opted to walk home, probably feeling a little neglected. That being said, Oskar didn't connect particularly well with his mother either.
During the book, Oskar was pretty interested in getting with Eli, typical preteen stuff. Eli would try to rebuff him but in ways that were very strange and didn't make sense. But Oskar finds out that Eli is a vampire, and was a boy called Elias. Despite all of that, Oskar came to terms with liking Eli. To him, I think Eli was the only person who ever made Oskar feel like he was heard. Even his own parents didn't really see him for who he was, while Eli was always watching him and engaging with him.
Oskar gained courage from Eli and went against his bullies, attacking one of them and severely hurting his ear. However, after Eli left, the bullies wanted to get back at Oskar, trying to drown him.
The end of the book was only reported through third parties, but it was implied that Eli had come back to save Oskar, and after she'd killed the bullies, they ran away together.
Eli
Eli was the og vampire in this town. She arrived and was presented as a young girl, with Hakan as her father. Oskar and Eli struck up a friendship. Because Eli wasn't very well-versed with human customs, it wouldn't have occurred to her that Oskar was an outcast. So she didn't judge Oskar. She also learned about human customs from Oskar.
Eli noticed that Oskar was becoming interested in her and I think she was already trying to thwart him before he even made a move. Eli mentioned to Oskar that she was neither a boy or a girl, which confused Oskar. We learn that Eli was originally a boy who was turned into a vampire. I think he was implied to have been castrated, which was where the not-a-boy and not-a-girl part came from. After the reveal, Eli was referred to as "he" in the book. For continuity and because Eli presents herself as a young girl, I continue to use she/her for her.
Another strange thing was that Eli was stuck in the mind of a twelve-year-old, which is not something I tend to see in stories about immortals. You would think that just by virtue of experience, a being would grow old and mature. That's a thing that's not really explored well in the book. It was kind of hand-waved which I didn't love.
One thing I didn't mind was that Eli's powers were not really stated in detail. We know that she has superior physical prowess, requires blood to survive, and cannot survive in sunlight. Eli apparently had some powers of persuasion, as seen when she was trying to kill the old lady and influenced her to lie down and become relaxed. We also learned what would happen if Eli entered a room without being granted permission. She would begin bleeding from every orifice, which I guess would effectively kill her.
Eli eventually returned Oskar's feelings, though they didn't really do much other than cuddle and talk. As things became dangerous for Eli, she asked Oskar whether he wanted her to stay. If he didn't, she would leave forever. After deliberation, Oskar decided that he wanted to Eli to be around. She did stay, but at one point things got quite dangerous and she did leave.
However, she came back to save Oskar from bullies and they escaped together.
Hakan
Hakan was Eli's companion. He was a pedophile and in love with Eli. At the beginning of the book, he was luring young boys. He did have some internal conflicts about killing them, but he did kill them for sustenance for Eli.
Based on snippets of conversations we read between Hakan and Eli, there was conflict over this. Eli used Hakan's attraction to her as a way to use him and get him to kill for her. And we saw that Hakan didn't like killing but he did it because he was so obsessed with Eli.
Hakan had chloroformed a boy and was about to bleed him in a public washroom when he was found out by some adult men. Before they could catch a glimpse of him, Hakan poured concentrated acid over his face (he had it in a jar in his bag). He had intended to disfigure himself so that the authorities wouldn't be able to track Eli through Hakan.
Surprisingly, Hakan did not die from the acid, but he basically did not have a face and only had an eye. I think he intended to give his blood to Eli as one last show of his devotion and then die. However Eli was interrupted. Hakan tried to jump to his death to avoid becoming a vampire but he did become a vampire.
He became somewhat of a mindless zombie flesh monster. He'd made his way to Eli with the intention to rape her but Eli fought him off. He was eventually killed by Tommy.
Virginia
Virginia didn't really make it onto my radar until we were presented with Virginia's relationship struggles. She basically felt shut out of Lacke's life as she knew nothing about him.
She was attacked by Eli when leaving a conversation/argument (I don't remember) with Lacke, so Lacke was a witness to the attack and that was what stopped Eli from finishing the job.
I thought Virginia's transformation was very interesting because we got a practical look at vampirism. After putting the pieces together, Virginia figured out she was probably a vampire and craving blood.
She had intended to kill Gosta for blood but was stopped by the cats and also Lacke was there, and she didn't want to kill in front of him. Virginia was hospitalized and held down with straps. That's when she revealed the truth to Lacke. She also asked him to kill her by stabbing her through the heart which understandably shocked him.
Lacke fell asleep next to her. When a nurse came in, Virginia asked the nurse to take him out of the room without waking him, intending to kill herself. The nurse refused, so Virginia gave up and just asked the nurse to open the window so she would burn.
Lacke
Lacke didn't realize how much he took Virginia's presence for granted until she didn't want to see him. And that feeling persisted until her death. He realized how much she meant to him.
After Virginia's death, he wanted to tell people about her vampirism as it would explain the death but he felt that no one would believe him. He thought that ironically, Virginia was the only person who would have believed him.
Themes
I think the main explored theme was loving the grotesque. To someone like Oskar, who was an outcast anyway, who didn't really know what it was like to have a normal friendship, Eli was as good a friend as anyone. After all, Eli listened to him and gave him strength and protected him. As for Eli, she didn't really think too hard about it. She knew it was dangerous for Oskar and he might not like the lifestyle. But she ultimately let him make that decision.
As for Virginia and Lacke, Virginia herself had trouble accepting her present condition. She was a lot older than Eli was when Eli was turned so understandably it was hard to accept for her. She couldn't live with herself and she wanted Lacke to kill her. If it had to be anyone, it would be him. But he didn't want to do it, so she had to do it herself.
Overall
It was an okay book. Didn't really evoke any feelings in me unfortunately. I don't think the movie would interest me either.