Vampires Ate My Rubik's Cube

I've been on a bit of a vampire kick with my reading recently, having ravaged the necks of both Salem's Lot and Let The Right One In back to back. It's certainly easy to see how one begat the other; Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist makes no secret of his love for Stephen King, even giving his hero Oskar King's Firestarter as reading material. Just as King did in Salem's Lot, Lindqvist takes the familiar vampire tropes and transfers them to a world right outside his window (give or take 20 years), setting his novel in a grey concrete new town in the early 80s - no doubt the world Lindqvist himself grew up in.



Salem's Lot was one of the first Stephen Kings I read, but even as a teenager I was already familiar with the story from the David Soul-starring TV mini series. (By the way, has anyone seen the Rob Lowe remake from a few years back? Worth my time?) Reading it again after all these years, I was captivated by the strength of the storytelling. King is at his best when given a large cast - or a small town - to play with, and there are many times in the first half of this book that I found myself wishing the horror wouldn't even come, such was I enjoying the everyday goings on in the Lot. King creates well-rounded characters you care about, so much that you hate the idea that anything horrible might happen to them... even though you know it's going to. Salem's Lot is a huge sprawling epic of a story (yet much tighter than much of the author's recent output), and were it not for all the vampires, it'd now be regarded as one of the great American novels of the 70s - by everybody, not just those of us unblinkered by genre snobbery.



Let The Right One In has a similar scope in terms of character and literary aspirations, though thematically it has more in common with King's debut novel, Carrie, a coming of age tale about what cruel and vicious places high schools can be. 12 year old Oskar is a lonely child from divorced parents, without a friend to protect him from the bullies that make his life a misery... until he meets the mysterious Eli, apparently a girl, apparently the same age as him. (Yes, those two apparentlys are both appropriate.) Oskar is a study in helpless, bottled rage, but with Eli's help the cork gets popped. Eli herself is a puzzle more complex even than the Rubik's Cube she teaches Oskar to master, a vampire trapped forever on the edge of adolescence, wise beyond her years yet emotionally unable to grow up. She's also one of the more sympathetic vampires you'll meet, something that is summed up in the quote that opens the novel...

I never wanted to kill
I am not naturally evil
These thing I do
Just to make myself more attractive to you
Have I failed?

The Morrissey fans among you will recognise that from Last Of The Famous International Playboys, but what you may not have realised (I hadn't for shame) is that the novel's title also owes a debt to the Moz, and his early b-side Let The Right One Slip In.

Let the right one in
Let the old things fade
Put the tricks and schemes (for good) away

And when at last it does
I'd say you were within your rights to bite
The right one and say, "what kept you so long ?"
"What kept you so long ?"

John Ajvide Lindqvist: influenced by Stephen King and Morrissey. How can he fail?



I hurried to read Let The Right One In before the film finally crept into the UK. (It was released in the US, Australia, and much of the rest of the world last year - what a backward country are we!) I enjoyed the novel so much I worried the adaptation might disappoint (and given the age of the two main protagonists, I couldn't see how certain scenes in the novel could be translated to cinema at all). Fortunately, Lindqvist handled the screenplay himself, making this both a faithful translation - and one which isn't afraid to jettison large sections of the novel (including the most terrifying subplot) that wouldn't work as well on film. The film benefits from this streamlining, though it does leave certain plot points intentionally vague - particularly the book's big twist, which is only hinted at on screen.

Let The Right One In the film is an atmospheric and evocative study of adolescent loneliness and first love, with vampires. Kinda like Twilight, I suppose - but for grown ups. The book is much better of course - but aren't they always?