Archive for the ‘John Ajvide Lindqvist’ Category
Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
published in 2004
where I got it: borrowed
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I read this book because I really enjoyed the movie versions. This novel took Sweden by storm when it first came out in 2004, quickly becoming a best seller with critics lauding Lindqvist as the country’s Stephen King. It wasn’t long before a movie was made in 2008. As has become a pattern with best selling Swedish thrillers, Hollywood wanted to do their version, and so an American version of the film, titled Let Me In, was released in 2010 starring Grace Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee. I’d seen both movies, enjoyed them both, and so was very excited to come across a copy of the book. The films are rather loyal to the premise and the first third or so of the novel, and the final few pages. Everything else is, let us say, glossed over.
This is mostly spoiler free review. I will not surprise anything that isn’t already revealed on the cover copy of the novel. the “spoiler” that I do reveal? Not the biggie, not by a long shot.
It’s 1981, and twelve year old Oskar is a loser. He gets beat up at school, and has a bed wetting issue and a shoplifting habit. The boys who bully him might be impressed by the shoplifting, but they still torture him mercilessly, and Oskar fantasizes about getting back at them. And he’s not the kind of boy to ask for help. One day, he meets a girl in the courtyard of his apartment complex. Eli is confident and smart, and since she’s new to the neighborhood, she has no idea Oskar is the local loser. She doesn’t go to his school, but they try to see each other every day. He confides in her, and she contemplates how much of her life she can share with him and Oskar knows better than to risk a new friendship by prying. He doesn’t mind that she’s weird, doesn’t mind that she doesn’t wear a coat when it’s snowing, or that she only comes out at night and has thick blankets covering the windows of her apartment. All that matters is that she’s not mean to him.
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