Product Description

Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself. Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city's edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he's frightened. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn't go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood. John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel, a huge bestseller in his native Sweden, is a unique and brilliant fusion of social novel and vampire legend; and a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship and loyalty.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84549 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 528 pages

Review
a terrifying supernatural story yet also a moving account of friendship and salvation...Lindqvist's dark fable would be gratuitously violent if it weren't so intelligently written...devastating conclusion - The Guardian Lindqvist's great strength as a writer is his evocation of time and place. The cheapjack monotony of Oskar's existence is as vividly realised as the scenes of gore splattered mayhem...it justifies its cult status in Scandinavia with its disturbing and convincing take on the banal horror of normality - Time Out Reminiscent of Stephen King at his best, there are some truly scary bits in the book that will haunt your dreams. Best read by sunlight - Independent On Sunday Fascinatingly, Lindqvist has reinvented the vampire novel and made it all the more chilling by setting it in the kind of sink estate we all know from the media. No mean achievement. Let The Right One In is an immensely readable and highly disturbing book in which grim levels of gore and violence are tempered by an unexpected tenderness - Daily Express There's a whiff of 'the new Stephen King' about the author who combines an atmospheric coming-of-age story set in Stockholm in 1981 with a shocking (and very gory) thriller. His vampire is an original, both heart-breakingly pathetic and terrifying. This was a bestseller in Sweden and could be equally big here. Don't miss it - The Times

Daily Express
...an immensely readable,highly disturbing book in which grim levels of gore and violence are tempered by an unexpected tenderness

Independent On Sunday
Reminiscent of Stephen King at his best...will haunt your dreams. Best read by sunlight

Customer Reviews

A truly mesmerising read
Before I go onto the gushing part of this review I feel some perspective is called for. So I will start by telling you what this book isn't, for me at least. For a start it wasn't anything like any Stephen King novel I ever read, despite claims that it is. It really is a different type of story and to compare in that way does this an injustice. Nor did I find it horrifying or scary. But I don't think that was probably the authors intention.

What this IS: A wonderfully observed coming of age tale centred around young Oskar, a bullied boy on the verge of adolescence who wets himself and shoplifts for therapy. The beauty is in the friendship he strikes up with Eli: the girl living next door - who just happens to be a 200 year old vampire stuck in a twelve year old girls body.

The creation of these two young and desperately lonely children, and their attempts to just get through each day given the challenges of their individual lives. Is the absolute strength of this. Their emerging friendship and Oskars coming of age, given these obstacles, especially Eli's condition, is absolutely mesmerising. Keeping me transfixed through every page over one weekend, and there are over 500 here.

There are a whole bunch of peripheral characters, the local drunks, parents, sex offenders, the bullies and the kids living on the same estate. All are vivid but at no time do you ever feel like they are anything other than mechanisms to hook the stories of Oskar and Eli. Hooks that worked brilliantly because all we are really interested in is Oskhar and Eli.

PROS: An absolutely wonderful tale of two young children, one a boy coming of age, the other a twelve year girl who also happens to be a powerful vampire. Utterly engaging, with an amazing end that is built up from almost the first page and the books title. The technical detail of a vampires biology was very imaginative.

CONS: The story of Hakan slips into parody. I was not sure whether this was intended as a homage to the classic books that exist in this genre. Or a slightly clumsy mechanism with which to manufacture a specific moment towards the end. Either way it didn't quite sit with the quality of the rest. There is also a big twist two thirds of the way, the purpose of which will only be known to the author. It didn't entirely work for me.

Summary: Not the next Stephen King, that does both authors an injustice. This is a wonderfully fresh and original coming of age story premised around a genre you might have thought had been done to death. Very highly recommended.

Not-So-Innocent Kids
I'd been anticipating this novel for quite some time, and not just because I'd booked to see the author at the Melbourne Writers' Festival. This tale is much more than just a vampire story. It has crime, social commentary, school life, parental issues, alcoholism and cats. It's so refreshing to read an urban fantasy novel that doesn't have the cliché kick-arse heroine. Instead, we have schoolboy Oskar, bullied relentlessly at school, who has a macabre fascination with murder. Eli, who's just moved next door, is like no one else Oskar's encountered for, and there's a good reason for that. Oskar and Eli are two of the most fascinating characters I've come across in a long time. The cat scenes are disturbing - the moral of the story being not to own eighteen cats. (I'm happy with just one.) The cruelty and violence of the kids is horrifying; forget the innocence you believe children have. An engrossing read that leaves me waiting for the author's second novel to be translated into English.

It shouldn't work, but it does
It shouldn't work to combine a book about children harassing each other, and vampires, but it does. Amazingly enough. I for one love the fact that it takes quite a while before you understand what's actually going on, and the main story is largely not about vampires or the normal silliness, but about normal society and normal people.

Very recommended :)