50 in '09: #1: Let the Right One In: Review
Not the first of John Ajvide Lindqvist's writing, but the first translated into English. Almost 500 pages of vampire-romance, and it left me crying and speechless. This post will be under a cut and public, and not at all personal.
Unfortunately I saw the movie first, so I can't really talk about the book without talking about the movie. Still, I'll vague it up. The movie was fantastic, and did all it could and more visually to ratchet up the emotion, showing the loneliness of a pretty but ostracized twelve year old boy well on his way to becoming the Swedish version of Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold, the two students who shot up Columbine. It also shows the redemption that can happen if only one person truly understands and accepts you; if you can bare your soul completely to them and they take you in and simply love you for it. Eli may be just as violent as Oskar in her own way, but she shows the regret of a predator who's survival instinct is stronger than her conscience. A lot is at play, and plays out within a slow, steady, and very tender two hours punctuated by a splash of blood here and there.
Still, if only someone truly talented had written the novel. I did some research. The screenwriter was also the writer of the novel. Perfect. I ordered it in, for me and for others, to enjoy. Imagine my disappointment when the first couple of pages were complete of what-the-fuckery? Was this 'prologue' an actual prologue? Was it simply a history for us Americans who knew nothing of what Sweden looked like? Was it even fiction or non-fiction flavored? It turns out it was part of the novel, and I pushed myself for the next couple of pages. When I looked up, I was 50 pages in. I've woken up twice - last night on sleeping pills - just to read this novel - and finish it in last night's case. After you get used to the rhythm of the writing, you don't notice the pages pass. You simply have to read on.
The only thing that bothered me about the writing itself was that he slipped from past to present tense at times. I don't understand why. I'm sure the author had a reason, but I didn't catch it at some times. I have a feeling, as I write this and think back, that it was to show the confusion of time at points and also to play off the way the novel is set up, going day by day and night by night and clearly telling us at the beginning of the which day of the week, of the month and which month we are about to be drawn into. The year is 1981 - hey, the year I was born in :D - and makes this contempary and nostalgic at the same time. It doesn't quite have the feel of 2000. Maybe it's the fact that it's obviously set in Sweden, but it feels more homey, more... old school. Like, ah, those days of past while allowing the author use of modern conveniences, such as taxis.
The setup is drawn out, showing us how Oskar is taunted and bullied, showing us that he used to have friends who stay away so they won't be outcast as well. It shows us the results. Oskar is incontinent, and too ashamed to spend part of his small income - which he does work for - to buy pills to prevent the problem. He practices, and imagines, killing his tormenters. He has bloody noses. He steals. He eats candy, gets fatter, which causes more taunting. The bullies call him 'piggy' and force him to squeal for them. Oskar is left even more ashamed, hateful - of others and himself - and conflicted. The beatings hurt, sure, but they're better than the emotional beatings he gives himself when he does anything to avoid the physical pain. This gives us a tangential view of Eli's pain later; you do anything to surivive, but you hate yourself for it later. Eli and Oskar both have no one to talk to until they meet each other.
Eli and Oskar are interesting. Oskar is a meal, until he gives Eli a present for her birthday, something that she's never gotten - not in two hundred years you find out later. Oskar insists that Eli share candy, one of the things that get him through his pathetic life, and she vomits. He hugs her. Slowly, she finds herself drawn to him; she didn't kill him initially most likely because she saw him pretend to kill a boy and she identified with that... need. A nice detail because later she distants himself from this desire of his, calling it simply that. He *wants* revenge. She kills because she needs to, she says. Although really, at one point, she points out that she's met another of her kind who said they didn't survive because they didn't want to live the way they did. So really, Eli kills because she wants to live; another character, Virginia, immediately kills herself before she kills anyone. She plans to, gets attacked by his cats who sense what she is, and then decides to die instead of go through with it even though she has a lover, a daughter, a grandson, and in general more ties to the world than Eli who has Hakan, a creepy old dude who helps her but really only wants to sleep with her despite the fact that he says he's her father to avoid suspicion.
Drugs and alcohol and addiction play a huge role. Everyone is addicted to something. Blood. Revenge. Love. Drugs. Alcohol. Oskar and Eli - and other characters - not only struggle with this, but at some point shy away from it. Eli yells at Hakkan that he has to kill others and drain their blood; they argue, both shouting that they don't want to do it. Someone has to for Eli to survive, however, and Hakkan denies her until she gives him what he wants - or a bit of it. He can sleep with her, naked, and touch her - but nothing more, which he really wants - for one night if he gets her blood once more. Hakan's addiction is Eli, and later so is Oskar's. People are addictions, too, ones that get people in trouble. (Pedophilia is a theme, as well, but not one that's condoned; in fact, I would argue that as another layer to the theme of addiction, it's rather something to be struggled against, to shy away from. The consequences are spelled out clearly; Hakan is just as alone as Eli and just as outcast as Oskar because someone merely accused him of sexually assulating a child.)
I just want to point out that I'm having trouble being coherent because one theme ties so closely into another, it's becoming difficult to talk about only one. So I'll leave with a couple other thoughts. First of all, in both the movie and book, Eli claims not to be a girl. I assumed this meant she was a vampire. I was reading reviews after I read the book. Eli is short for Elias, both Jewish and male names. The castration scene in the book clearly tells you Eli is a boy. For the remainder of the book, both he and she, her and him, are used to describle Eli. The theme of genderis played up quite a lot; Lacke loves Virginia, wants to move away with her, but in an almost romantic gesture says he has nothing left when his male friend Jocke has been killed. Keep in mind, he says this when he's drunk, unhibited - and in front of Virginia, pushing her away. He seems as attached to a male as a female, just as devastated at his death as hers. Or more so at hers, but he's already lost Jocke, and has nothing left, really.
Secondly, when Oskar finds out about the castration - by seeing it, feeling it as if it had happened to him - he tells Eli s/he's gross. Eli leaves. Eli comes back to save Oskar's life in the end. They run off together, and Eli is safe on the train in a trunk. Oskar is incredibly happy. Okay, yeah, sure there's resolution. It couldn't have ended any other way. Eli accepts the insults flung at him because he has had two hundred years of being alone; he's experienced so much self-hatred, has had so many years to accept it, that he must recognize that self-hatred of Oskar's turned outward, against Eli in this case because he's the only real, tangible, and most importantly safe target. Still... 'You're gross, don't you get it? You're gross.' It still haunts and bothers me. But Eli shows Oskar himself, shown with the eyes of love - shown from Eli's eyes, after this comment. It's only moments - I believe, the timeline is kinda funky here, but the same night, most likely the same half hour to hour - before that Oskar is going to give Eli a goodbye present after finding out she's a he. He saves her, wants to tell the man who's trying to kill her that she's his friend. Not the *person* Oskar loves, although he clearly does love Eli. The timeline here, these particular bits, bother me.
Logging off for now.
Unfortunately I saw the movie first, so I can't really talk about the book without talking about the movie. Still, I'll vague it up. The movie was fantastic, and did all it could and more visually to ratchet up the emotion, showing the loneliness of a pretty but ostracized twelve year old boy well on his way to becoming the Swedish version of Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold, the two students who shot up Columbine. It also shows the redemption that can happen if only one person truly understands and accepts you; if you can bare your soul completely to them and they take you in and simply love you for it. Eli may be just as violent as Oskar in her own way, but she shows the regret of a predator who's survival instinct is stronger than her conscience. A lot is at play, and plays out within a slow, steady, and very tender two hours punctuated by a splash of blood here and there.
Still, if only someone truly talented had written the novel. I did some research. The screenwriter was also the writer of the novel. Perfect. I ordered it in, for me and for others, to enjoy. Imagine my disappointment when the first couple of pages were complete of what-the-fuckery? Was this 'prologue' an actual prologue? Was it simply a history for us Americans who knew nothing of what Sweden looked like? Was it even fiction or non-fiction flavored? It turns out it was part of the novel, and I pushed myself for the next couple of pages. When I looked up, I was 50 pages in. I've woken up twice - last night on sleeping pills - just to read this novel - and finish it in last night's case. After you get used to the rhythm of the writing, you don't notice the pages pass. You simply have to read on.
The only thing that bothered me about the writing itself was that he slipped from past to present tense at times. I don't understand why. I'm sure the author had a reason, but I didn't catch it at some times. I have a feeling, as I write this and think back, that it was to show the confusion of time at points and also to play off the way the novel is set up, going day by day and night by night and clearly telling us at the beginning of the which day of the week, of the month and which month we are about to be drawn into. The year is 1981 - hey, the year I was born in :D - and makes this contempary and nostalgic at the same time. It doesn't quite have the feel of 2000. Maybe it's the fact that it's obviously set in Sweden, but it feels more homey, more... old school. Like, ah, those days of past while allowing the author use of modern conveniences, such as taxis.
The setup is drawn out, showing us how Oskar is taunted and bullied, showing us that he used to have friends who stay away so they won't be outcast as well. It shows us the results. Oskar is incontinent, and too ashamed to spend part of his small income - which he does work for - to buy pills to prevent the problem. He practices, and imagines, killing his tormenters. He has bloody noses. He steals. He eats candy, gets fatter, which causes more taunting. The bullies call him 'piggy' and force him to squeal for them. Oskar is left even more ashamed, hateful - of others and himself - and conflicted. The beatings hurt, sure, but they're better than the emotional beatings he gives himself when he does anything to avoid the physical pain. This gives us a tangential view of Eli's pain later; you do anything to surivive, but you hate yourself for it later. Eli and Oskar both have no one to talk to until they meet each other.
Eli and Oskar are interesting. Oskar is a meal, until he gives Eli a present for her birthday, something that she's never gotten - not in two hundred years you find out later. Oskar insists that Eli share candy, one of the things that get him through his pathetic life, and she vomits. He hugs her. Slowly, she finds herself drawn to him; she didn't kill him initially most likely because she saw him pretend to kill a boy and she identified with that... need. A nice detail because later she distants himself from this desire of his, calling it simply that. He *wants* revenge. She kills because she needs to, she says. Although really, at one point, she points out that she's met another of her kind who said they didn't survive because they didn't want to live the way they did. So really, Eli kills because she wants to live; another character, Virginia, immediately kills herself before she kills anyone. She plans to, gets attacked by his cats who sense what she is, and then decides to die instead of go through with it even though she has a lover, a daughter, a grandson, and in general more ties to the world than Eli who has Hakan, a creepy old dude who helps her but really only wants to sleep with her despite the fact that he says he's her father to avoid suspicion.
Drugs and alcohol and addiction play a huge role. Everyone is addicted to something. Blood. Revenge. Love. Drugs. Alcohol. Oskar and Eli - and other characters - not only struggle with this, but at some point shy away from it. Eli yells at Hakkan that he has to kill others and drain their blood; they argue, both shouting that they don't want to do it. Someone has to for Eli to survive, however, and Hakkan denies her until she gives him what he wants - or a bit of it. He can sleep with her, naked, and touch her - but nothing more, which he really wants - for one night if he gets her blood once more. Hakan's addiction is Eli, and later so is Oskar's. People are addictions, too, ones that get people in trouble. (Pedophilia is a theme, as well, but not one that's condoned; in fact, I would argue that as another layer to the theme of addiction, it's rather something to be struggled against, to shy away from. The consequences are spelled out clearly; Hakan is just as alone as Eli and just as outcast as Oskar because someone merely accused him of sexually assulating a child.)
I just want to point out that I'm having trouble being coherent because one theme ties so closely into another, it's becoming difficult to talk about only one. So I'll leave with a couple other thoughts. First of all, in both the movie and book, Eli claims not to be a girl. I assumed this meant she was a vampire. I was reading reviews after I read the book. Eli is short for Elias, both Jewish and male names. The castration scene in the book clearly tells you Eli is a boy. For the remainder of the book, both he and she, her and him, are used to describle Eli. The theme of genderis played up quite a lot; Lacke loves Virginia, wants to move away with her, but in an almost romantic gesture says he has nothing left when his male friend Jocke has been killed. Keep in mind, he says this when he's drunk, unhibited - and in front of Virginia, pushing her away. He seems as attached to a male as a female, just as devastated at his death as hers. Or more so at hers, but he's already lost Jocke, and has nothing left, really.
Secondly, when Oskar finds out about the castration - by seeing it, feeling it as if it had happened to him - he tells Eli s/he's gross. Eli leaves. Eli comes back to save Oskar's life in the end. They run off together, and Eli is safe on the train in a trunk. Oskar is incredibly happy. Okay, yeah, sure there's resolution. It couldn't have ended any other way. Eli accepts the insults flung at him because he has had two hundred years of being alone; he's experienced so much self-hatred, has had so many years to accept it, that he must recognize that self-hatred of Oskar's turned outward, against Eli in this case because he's the only real, tangible, and most importantly safe target. Still... 'You're gross, don't you get it? You're gross.' It still haunts and bothers me. But Eli shows Oskar himself, shown with the eyes of love - shown from Eli's eyes, after this comment. It's only moments - I believe, the timeline is kinda funky here, but the same night, most likely the same half hour to hour - before that Oskar is going to give Eli a goodbye present after finding out she's a he. He saves her, wants to tell the man who's trying to kill her that she's his friend. Not the *person* Oskar loves, although he clearly does love Eli. The timeline here, these particular bits, bother me.
Logging off for now.