This month's category is "set in a country starting with S," appearing easy enough, and right off the bat I probably would've picked Spain because I'm obsessed with Spain, but I picked this book up shortly after seeing the film and it's been on my vampire shelf (yes, I have a section of a shelf for vampire stuff, and no Twilight is not on it) taunting me. And conveniently, the fact that it was set in Sweden caused this book to be a perfect fit for this month. I haven't read many books about Sweden, save the Stieg Larsson books, and I thoroughly enjoyed venturing into a country I didn't know much about. The streets and towns and shorthands were unknown to me, allowing me to immerse myself a little more fully in the story. The prologue began after the events of the story took place, and they whisked you back effectively enough to merit the hungry turning of every page.
The book is divided up in days, stretching from October 21 to November 13, detailing events taking place in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in Sweden. The point of view is omniscient, moving from different characters, their stories slowly seeping together over the course of nearly a month of interactions in a small town. Lindqvist is excellent at character development, allowing us at least a sliver of each one's interior monologue, enough to get us to remember them as the tale weaves on. The main plotline follows Oskar, a pre-teen boy growing up with his divorced mother in a small Swedish town, a boy who is bullied constantly and viciously every day by kids at school. He meets a mysterious girl next door, Eli, who is barefoot and seems entirely nocturnal, and they strike up an unlikely friendship. Eli's counterpart is a pedophiliac (human) father-figure named Håkan, who serves her in terms of acquiring sustenance and maintaining their house. With Håkan we come across a number of topics that were excised almost completely from the film adaptations like pedophilia, child rape, and child prostitution. Such themes are only a few of the uncomfortable topics that Lindqvist deals with in the text, perhaps in an effort to never allow any reprieve from the discomfort associated with his story.
One review I read of the book called it "unrelentingly grim," which I completely agree with. There are some moments where the unrelenting grimness sort of falls away, but these are few and far between. The beauty of this book is that it spans terrors from the supernatural (vampires) to the everyday (bullying), and it treats them with equal weight. For example, Lindqvist describes Oskar's rage at being bullied and his thoughts of vengeance and violence, sometimes tending even toward murderous thoughts, and he allows Oskar to feel these things and describe them to us without demonizing him. In the same way, he describes Eli and her situation with a vagueness that belies the secrecy of their person, but also does not make many judgments on them, beyond those that are put forth by Oskar himself. All in all, Oskar and Eli each represent a sort of childhood neglect and outsider status that transcends their differing situations. Oskar is living with his divorced mother, his father having left earlier in his life, taking with him the only sort of male role model he can turn to--and even this role model disintegrates throughout the story. Oskar is overweight, odd, and easy to pick on, and the boys at his school do so relentlessly. Oskar is aware of the game he is embroiled in, the role he must play, and his only solace is clipping violent news articles and pasting them into his scrapbook, imagining himself as the perpetrator of these crimes. Eli, in their own way, has been forced into outsider status by their very nature, the history of which is slowly revealed to us as it is to Oskar. There are physical signs of Eli's neglect, from their ratty pink sweater to their bare feet and strange smell.
I don't think the word "vampire" is used to describe what Eli is until very very late in the book, but it is pretty clear from the beginning what the pieces are adding up to. I may say that because I've seen both movie versions, and that might have colored my reading of the story to some extent, and also my vampire radar is pretty great. If only they were real....*sigh*. In any case, the vampiric aspect of this tale is one I particularly enjoyed. There are a number of vampire lore tropes that were played with here. Needing permission to enter, tears of blood, pain when exposed to sunlight, the list goes on. One that I was particularly interested in is one that Eli uses a number of times to share her past with Oskar: they share a kiss, and Oskar can immediately see through eyes that are not his, experience things that have not happened to him, things that took place many years before.
The book ends with the same detached tone as it began, an epilogue describing the situation from the outside once again. There is still a sense of ominous foreboding that wafts around Eli's other-ness. I find it interesting that the text ends with an actual outsider to the story, as most of the characters have been societal outsiders in their own way, in addition to Oskar and Eli. There are the drunks who frequent the Chinese restaurant. Håkan as a pedophile. Tommy as an addict. Everyone we are introduced to has a darkness within them, and other reviewers have argued that this makes it difficult for the reader to remain engaged as there is no sympathetic outlet, but I enjoyed it. Not in a sadistic way, just in terms of the overarching feel of the story. Let The Right One In is most certainly a depressing and uncomfortable story, but the eloquence of the writer and characters are more than worth the skin-prickling that accompanies it.
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