Let Me In: John Ajvide Lindqvist

John Ajvide Lindqvist's debut novel, Let Me In, is the story of Oskar, a bullied twelve-year-old, and the new little girl, Eli, who moves into his apartment building and eventually befriends him. There's something wrong with Eli, though; she wears no coat in the freezing Swedish winter, only comes out at night, and smells like something rotten...

So sets the stage for Let Me In. The novel takes place in early 80's Sweden and although it is a little difficult to appreciate some of the fundamental aspects of daily Swedish life - for example, the locales, subway system, currency, etc - a competent translation into English and identifiable cultural references, such as the Rubik's Cube, KISS and Iron Maiden, make it easy to stay in stride with the story. What is on the surface a vampire novel is actually more of a coming-of-age tale revolving around two lonely children, the friendship they form and their struggle to deal with Eli's vampirism. Several subplots, including a brilliant one involving Hakan, Eli's caretaker, and his attempts to obtain blood for her, help progress the story and flesh out the supporting characters into more than just potential victims.

Reading Let Me In, one cannot help but pick up on Lindqvist's obvious disdain for the police, newspapers and, in all likelihood, children. Not that this detracts from the story in any way; rather, it paints a much more easily envisioned foreign country than an American author would throwing around a few architectural descriptions and the occasional italicized foreign phrase. The shortcomings here actually occur from the author's focus on the subplots; there's too many different storylines going on and when the focus of the story shifts from Oskar and Eli to Lacke, a middle-aged man who has had the two closest people in his life fall victim to Eli, the storytelling becomes tedious and the excellent pace managed throughout the first half of the book grinds to a halt. The result is an ending that feels very rushed, as though Lindqvist realized his deadline was coming up and put to paper a final act that does no justice to the story leading up to it.

I did like this book, up until about the halfway point. For all the meticulous set-up and depiction of the characters in their daily lives, for as much as I wanted to enjoy it I was left feeling as though I blinked and missed something integral to the story. In truth, probably a hundred pages of material and possibly even a character or two could be cut without jeopardizing the book and, in all likelihood, would improve the pace for the second half of the book. Don't get me wrong; the storytelling is great and there's an obvious knack for crafting scenes that are easily visualized, but too much is overkill in any language.
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Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (October 16, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0312355289
ISBN-13: 978-0312355289
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