Book #1

Let the Right One In
Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist
Quercus, 2008

First book down for the year. I've started on a high note, too, with a book that quite literally kept me up nights thinking about just how it's author successfully mixed such graphic images and sweet-natured romance. Okay, so, it was the images of plasma-leaking eyeballs and bodies in bathtubs that had me jumping at every midnight noise, but still ...

The gist: Oskar feels the rage of any bullied schoolkid, fantisizing about getting his own back against the baddies in putrid, violent ways. Eli moves in next door, and her first encounter with Oskar is following one of his fantasy attacks. Eli is an outsider, too, and she and Oskar forge a connection. Eli, we learn, is a vampire, and her caretaker, Hakan, exists to satisfy her bloody needs. He kills for her and is eventually caught, leaving Eli all alone, and in need. Oskar and Eli get closer, while Eli's "influence" on the community gets a bit, well ... out of control. And there's much more going on -- bullies wanting revenge, kids wanting guidance, a dead man with a acid-burned face refusing to stay down. It's so heavily layered that as each story nears it's end, the tension becomes almost unbearable as they begin to converge.

This is a horror story and a love story. And the blending of those elements is very clever, if not slightly schizophrenic. There were moments I felt bile rising in my throat, closing the book and my eyes to shake away some ultra-confronting images. Other times, though, I dropped my cynical shoulders and sat back in awe as Lindqvist's characters so valiantly declared love through unthinkable acts of loyalty. Loyalty is probably at the heart of the story, love and horror aside. Characters risk their lives to help one another, enter dangerous situations to save one another, kill to be closer to each other.

And while vampires abound, the book does not feel like a supernatural tale. Lindqvist recreated his life in 1981 Blackeberg, and comments frequently on the political and social climates, the social concerns of a small town, and some alternative family structures (two key characters in the book, Oskar and Tommy, do not have fathers at home). There's a reality to the story, even if Sweden itself has an otherworldy air for an outsider like myself, that makes you believe vampires exist here, brought in to shake up the middling status quo. All romanticised vampire lore is scrapped for the very basics, and so Eli's struggle feels real. We're not sidetracked by garlic necklaces and stakes through hearts -- she lives and dies, for the most part, as we do, and because of this, we feel for her even as she bites into the necks of characters we come to love.

I grabbed the book because I was so gripped by the movie trailer. And I'm so happy I did that as the film, which I watched almost as soon as I finished reading, centres itself so firmly on Oskar and Eli that those layers I mentioned pretty much don't exist. The film is beautiful, though I found it slightly flawed (Hakan's character remains almost unexplained, for instance). Its beauty has much to do with its portrayal of Oskar and Eli's relationship. I worried that due to their ages, their romance might not translate so well, but it does.

So, all in all, not a bad start to my reading year.