Let Me In- Book Review

So, I have finally finished the first book of my fifty-two book goal, Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, also known as Let the Right One In. It was very long, for me, 472 pages in hard cover. It was much more terrifying than I'd imagined as well. Anyway, I'd better make some sort of eloquent review in order to put in Amazon in the end, so here's a late-night rough draft, lame, to be sure.

Let Me In-

While many literary critics quickly associate the voice of John Ajvide Lindqvist with other more well-known writers of the horror genre, Lindqvist should be noted as a young artist noteworthy for his particular distinctness of story-telling and narrative. In an era that has seen the violent vampire myth turned into a romantic topic of teen angst, Lindqvist imagines vampirism in its darkest hours, weaving a tale of murder, sadism, and everyday suffering, in which it is not so much the vampires as the humans who are the monsters.

Lindqvist's take on the necessities for the modern vampire's survival is innovative and disturbing; the vampire-girl Eli lives in the body of a 12-year-old and thus depends on a middle-aged pedophile to support her need for blood. She is too young for work but cannot survive in a modern world without financial assets, and so takes money from her victims. As a vampire or vampire-like creature, she does not kill for pleasure but purely to survive, and the author clearly illustrates for readers that most people-turned-vampire cannot make the choice to kill, and instead commit suicide.

While the story primarily focuses on the extended life of Eli and her new friend Oskar, a viciously bullied 12-year-old boy, it also shows how their situations affect those around them. Vampirism is treated as an epidemic that Eli attempts to contain but which somehow continues to spread throughout the novel, creating on particularly terrifying character both in appearance and mannerism. The town of Blackeberg itself becomes a character, treated as the Transylvania of the Bram Stoker novel.