mygoditsraining
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2008
- Messages
- 448
Hi folks.
I did a quick search, couldn't see any mention of this novel, so I thought I'd start a new thread just to enthuse about it. I understand there was some form of great forum crash so it may have been discussed previously, so please forgive me if I'm pacing down a tiresomely over-trodden path.
While on holiday, I read a copy of John Ajdvide Lindqvist's 2004 vampire novel, as titled above. If you're at all a fan of really uncomfortable horror fiction, then I heartily reccomend it.
Blackeberg is a run-down suburb of Stockholm. Social decrepitude lies heavily on the architecture and the populace. In the course of the novel, Lindqvist creates an astonishingly vivid picture of this grey, miserable existence, the half-life that people can eke out when ambition fails and circumstances leave them staring into the emptiness of an unfulfilling life. Into this world comes Eli, a 200 year old vampire in the body of a 12 year old, and her...companion, and precipitate a series of escalatingly terrible events.
I'd go on more, but I would spoil a lot of things in the book by trying to describe them. Really, it's just a great read - full of interesting characters, many of whom are sympathetic to a greater or lesser extent, and deeply uncomfortable situations and insights. If you're looking for a light read, it's not here - and the book is all the better for it.
If I had any complaints at all, I felt the ending was a touch abrupt, and thus a little unsatisfying in bringing Oskar's story to a conclusion, and sometimes the author's knowledge of classical literature weighs down the characters with unecessary details.
If you're in America, the novel is called "Let Me In", because the publishers felt the title was too long for the US market.
For anyone interested, there is also a movie of the book, directed by Tomas Alfredson. It will probably get a subtitled release this year, but needless to say given that it won a bunch of awards there is a remake in the pipe for 2010.
I did a quick search, couldn't see any mention of this novel, so I thought I'd start a new thread just to enthuse about it. I understand there was some form of great forum crash so it may have been discussed previously, so please forgive me if I'm pacing down a tiresomely over-trodden path.
While on holiday, I read a copy of John Ajdvide Lindqvist's 2004 vampire novel, as titled above. If you're at all a fan of really uncomfortable horror fiction, then I heartily reccomend it.
Blackeberg is a run-down suburb of Stockholm. Social decrepitude lies heavily on the architecture and the populace. In the course of the novel, Lindqvist creates an astonishingly vivid picture of this grey, miserable existence, the half-life that people can eke out when ambition fails and circumstances leave them staring into the emptiness of an unfulfilling life. Into this world comes Eli, a 200 year old vampire in the body of a 12 year old, and her...companion, and precipitate a series of escalatingly terrible events.
I'd go on more, but I would spoil a lot of things in the book by trying to describe them. Really, it's just a great read - full of interesting characters, many of whom are sympathetic to a greater or lesser extent, and deeply uncomfortable situations and insights. If you're looking for a light read, it's not here - and the book is all the better for it.
If I had any complaints at all, I felt the ending was a touch abrupt, and thus a little unsatisfying in bringing Oskar's story to a conclusion, and sometimes the author's knowledge of classical literature weighs down the characters with unecessary details.
If you're in America, the novel is called "Let Me In", because the publishers felt the title was too long for the US market.
For anyone interested, there is also a movie of the book, directed by Tomas Alfredson. It will probably get a subtitled release this year, but needless to say given that it won a bunch of awards there is a remake in the pipe for 2010.
