Hi guise!!
OMG I'm going to see Lady Gaga in
Helsinki this month!!! I am so excited =D I got a really good seat
too, right near stage, so I should be able to see Gaga perfectly <3
I'm going to see her on Monday the 27th so only a few
weeks left. Will be perfect since I'm looking to work really hard the
rest of the month. I haven't been feeling particularly artistic right
now, so it's gonna be inspiring to see Gaga's show. I have a couple
of collages that I should finish, buuuut since I'm doing long hours
at work, I don't have the energy to focus on art afterwards. Hence I
thought I'd do something fun for my blog for a change.
I know there are hundreds of blogs
focusing on literature and literature is very popular subject among
Finnish bloggers. I believe one of our ministers keeps a literature
blog which he updates regularly. My blog is a miss-match of different
things I'm interested in. Well so far it has been about art, but I'm
looking to talk about other stuff too.
There are times when I read books in
tandem, and then there are times when I don't read anything at all.
Right now I'm on one of my literary tandems, hence I thought I'd give
you the 4-1-1 on 5 books I have 'recently' read.
However, there is a catch (with me,
there's always a catch xP). IF I post all 5 right now, this would be
seriously looooooong entry. Nothing wrong with that, but I think you,
the reader, would get frustrated about how long this entry is going to go on
(like reading a school book: 'OMG I have already read 30 pages and
there is still 30 left on the British bread wars!'). And since it's me writing these reviews, they are going to be long.
I'm going to start with a book I read
in June followed by:
The Taker by Alma Katsu
Män som hatar kvinnor (The girl with the dragon tattoo) by
Stieg Larsson
Rei Shimura series (I think I'll review two of those) by Sujata Massey
and the last one is...well I haven't decided yet.
I'm looking to post The Taker next
month and Lisbeth's series in October and so on...
Now, I must warn you about big time
spoilers. In order to give you my honest opinion on these books, I
have to assume that you have read them, or are curious to know what
happens and you don't mind spoilers. If I have to avoid
spoilers this would be just another plain book review. There are many
things I wanna say about these books so it makes more sense if I'm
allowed to assume that you have read the books. I'm going to be critizing some of the books quite
'heavily' so hopefully you are not one of those people who get
offended easily --_-- You have been warned!
I'm going to start with a book that I
really really liked for its capability to amalgamate fantasy in to
reality. Låt den rätte komma in (Let the right one in) by
John
Ajvide Lindqvist. I read a few reviews on this book
years before and I came really close to buying the movie (the Swedish
one, duh!), but I knew that I'd read the book one day so I didn't
wanna spoil the story for me. I read this book in June and what
happens to me sometimes when I read a book is that I start reading
it, then I get bored and leave it for a few and weeks and then finish
it. Same thing happened with this book because I felt that it wasn't
proceeding fast enough and that there wasn't much stuff happening.
When you get past that, Låt den rätte komma in is actually
very interesting story.
What I think is important to understand
about this story is that it doesn't religiously follow the main
character, this is more like a collection of mini stories involving
people who are accidentally involved with each other. The main
character is a twelve-year-old Swedish boy named Oskar. The story
takes place in a suburb near Stockholm in early winter of 1981. Oskar is bullied at
school, he has a problem with urination and is slightly over-weight
.He lives with his mother and doen't have anyone to call a friend.
So he is a typical little boy (who wasn't bullied at school, who had
''friends'' but didn't have friends?). The book takes a really
interesting turn right in the beginning when Oskar is walking through
a forest to find a secret place to let out all his anger. Mean while
there is a man in the same forest searching for a prey. I seriously
thought that Lindqvist would kill off his main character right in the beginning. My skin was
crawling when the story was
describing the lurker's thoughts. Håkan (the gay
pedophile lurker) kills a different boy and drains his blood. It's
revealed that Oskar was on his way to a different spot where he
played that he'd kill his bullies by stabbing them to death (he stabs
trees with a kitchen knife). So Oskar lives to fight another day, until he meets Eli. Eli is a girl living in the next apartment house
(she and Oskar share a wall). At first Eli is cold and distant until
she warms up to Oskar's gestures to become friends when he loans her
his Rubik's cube (she shows genuine interest in the toy). Hence they
start meeting every night after dusk. During the day Oskar goes to
school and avoids bullies, steals knives and candy and buys stolen
items from his neighbour Tommy and deals flyers on the weekends.
I found it fascinating how genuine
Oskar was. Here we have a twelve-year-old boy who is severely abused
and humiliated at school, yet he still manages to find small
pleasures in life. I know in America people would be appaled to read
about a damaged young boy who steals weapons and runs away from his
father in the middle of the night, but to me, this is very realistic
depiction of this child's life. Cause and consequences. Under the
circumstances Oskar is, you can't expect him to be
too-goody-two-shoes. I mean, kids run away from home all the time,
kids steal stuff, yet none of this is barely depicted in stories
anymore. Contemporary stories tend to stay tame or, on the contrary,
they go way over board, to the point they become silly. This
story isn't silly (well until the point when Håkan..well you'll know
when you get there). It's very endearing to read about Oskar's
attempts to befriend Eli. It warms my heart when the two indeed
become friends and for the first time Oskar has a real friend in the
world. I found it encouraging to read how Oskar slowly gains more
confidence and gets over his urination problem (caused my trauma) and
for the first time stands up for his tormentors.. In the beginning Oskar may seem like a young boy
heading to loony town since he is obsessed with keeping a scarpbook
of newspaper articles about murders. He even practices how to kill
his tormentors and uses the threat of 'the ritual murderer' to steal a
proper hunting knife from a store. However halfway the book it struck
me that Oskar is actually pretty smart. But you'll have to have read
the book to see for yourself.
While Oskar's and Eli's friendship
deepens (Lindqvist doesn't rush the process), we move on to follow the gay pedophile
Håkan. It doesn't take a genious to realize that Håkan is involved
with Eli and kills young ones (not too young!) to supply Eli with
human blood. Later in the story we learn that Håkan was an
elementary school teacher who liked young boys. He wasn't involved
with anyone from his school, but a collection of child pornography
was found in his possession, so the school fired him and somebody
burned down his house. Eli found him when he was literally at the
bottom of his life. He is in love with Eli, but remains passive, even
gentleman-ish, towards her, who refrains from all sexual intercourse
with him. He deeply longs to touch and feel his loved one, who time
after time denies this pleasure from him, still he feels deep
attachment to Eli. After killing his second victim (the one in the
woods) he goes to a library in Stockholm and purchases oral sex from
a ten year old immigrant. What really struck me was when Håkan
notices that the boy doesn't have teeth =( He assumes that they have
been removed to make the oral task easier (more pleasurable for the
receiver?) so he gives the boy a fast sum of money to get new teeth.
Everyone probably assumes that Håkan is the villain of this story, but
the way I see it, he is the anti-hero. I am strongly
against pedophilism and do not agree what Håkan does in the story,
but Lindqvist
writes so accurately about Håkan's regret and conflict that one
can't help, but pity and like him at the same time. He is a diamond
in the rough, a person who has been making wrong decisions all his life.
His innocent obsession with Eli is rather endearing and it's rather
amazing to see him respected her wishes not to have intercourse, even
though he is clearly aching for her. Lindqvist
is really good at telling about Håkan's conflict without going
overboard. With small gestures he tells how greatly bothered Håkan
is by the murders he had to commit to keep his loved one alive. Still
Lindqvist doesn't tell this via fancy words nor drag the sentence on and on by
throwing in various figurative expressions. I don't shy away from
extreme characters, and you have to admit it, when was the last time
you saw a gay pedophile in a story? It's fresh and it's obscene, and
it's so Scandinavian. Hello from North Europe, we bring you a
collection of extreme characters who are as much extreme as they are
realistic. I think it was nice of Håkan to give that young boy money
to get his teeth fixed. Yes he is a criminal, but
Lindqvist has build this character so well and accurately that I can see a real
person there. He has major unforgivable flaws, but there is also
goodness in him. Not that I think it's right of him to purchase oral
sex from little boys to begin with.
However it is a bit annoying when Håkan mopes about his eternal love
for Eli and the things he has to do for her, while she has no respect
for him what so ever. He is just a food provider to her (personally I
think she's a dick). At least he gets to feel like he is the luckiest
man on earth to have been chosen by such an angel (and there might also
be a promise of eternal life).
Håkan's lifes takes a drastic turn
when Eli sends him for his last mission (after she screwed up badly
and killed a local drunk Lacke ← this is actually a really sad
story). Håkan says that he will get her blood one more time, under
the condition that he may hold her and touch her after the deed is
done. So he goes to a local swimming pool (indoors) and rents a booth
to himself, where he makes a mess in his booth when he sees young boys (I guess he is easily stimulated). He manages to capture and
'drug' a boy (he uses some sort of helium tank to make the victim
unconscious and then drains them dry) and proceeds to drain him.
(regarding this practice there is a wonderful little conversation in
the beginning of the story between Tommy and his friends. They hang
out at their building's air-raid shelter and discuss how pigs are
slaughtered. One of them says that the pigs are hung upside down and
drained from their blood while they are conscious). The boy wakes up and
makes a ruckus. Before men can burst in to Håkan's booth, he takes a
jam jar and pours the acid inside all over his face. His last
thoughts are rather moving, he imagines that Eli, angel boy Eli,
comes to take him away, and then he pours the acid whilst yelling
'Eli, Eli'.
Mean while Eli has been making a mess
of her own. Håkan has dissapeared and she needs blood. She is strong
enough to move on her own, but she needs more blood. Hence before she
sent Håkan to his last mission, she killed a local drunk Lacke who
spend his evenings and nights in a local Chinese restaurant. Now we
meet people who may not seem as important to the story's development, but we'll get there. I'm guessing this group of bums is Lindqvist's way of showing how much damage a single parson can do to others. And
that every single person has a life and plans of their own, that we
shouldn't look down on people no matter what their social status is.
At first I was confused to be reading about these local bums who
spend their days drinking at a local pub/restaurant with no plans for
the future nor ambition (they reminded me too much of the local
'drunks/bums' we have at work). But then
Lindqvist gives us Lacke, a man who may be a bum, but still has some drive in
him to go traveling and maybe meet someone and settle down. It
actually opened my eyes a little since I reckon some of the bums at
our restaurant are just spinless, boring people with no credibility.
But
Lindqvist reminded me that just like Lacke, those bums have plans, things they
wanna do and see (but I don't get it why they wanna spend their time
at out restaurant EVERYDAY, literally everyday from 10am or 3pm until
10pm). So it's very sad to read when Eli attacks Lacke and kills him.
The others are left to grieve for his dissapearance (Håkan dumps the
body in a nearby lake), however someone saw Eli attack Lacke. Gösta
is a...uummm local loony, cocooned in his apartment with dozens of
cats. The others know him and visit him every now and then. So the
gang goes to visit him and Gösta tells them what he saw. Lacke's
bestfriend Jocke (yeah...I know) is devastated and in his grief
insults badly his old (and current) flame Virginia. She rushes out
and is far ahead before Jocke rushes after her. He is just in time to
see Eli attack Virginia, but Eli is unable to kill her, so Virginia
is left wounded. Note that Gösta and Jocke only see a child attack
Lacke and Virginia. They don't know Eli.
At this point it would be appropriate
to tell you that Eli is a vampire (chuckle). Virginia is infected and
begins to turn into a vampire. The story follows her struggles which is rather interesting since she has no idea that she is turning into a vampire. Reading about her ordeal was actually really touching. She was the innocent one. She just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and now she is left to pay for it. Hence it should be clear by now that Lindqvist wanted to make everyone of his characters victims. It's up to you to decide whether they are all victims of Eli or of their own life style (I personally like to think that they are all victims of Eli). In the end Virginia ends up in a hospital and commits suicide (she asks the nurse to
open the drapes). Jocke is once again left devastated and if not
earlier, this is where you should realize how realistic this story
actually is. It's not a story about silly vampires and monsters, it's
a story about people with real-life plans and thoughts. This is
especially visible in Jocke's gang because they aren't
Hollywood-good-looking people with fast sums of money and a few
thoughts on life. They are regular people who have very ordinary
lives, who seek small pleasures that they can find in their
enviroment and pass yet another ordinary day. You won't find 'a thing'
happening in these places, no catastrophe or monster lurking in the
woods. It's plain everyday life. People go to work, they come home
(or our restaurant xP) and do the same thing tomorrow and the day
after tomorrow and so on. However, in this case Eli delivers a
massive blow to their everyday life by taking Lacke's life and, in a
way, Virginia's life. Jocke has been planning to move to the country
side, and have two cabins build, one for him and one for Virginia. He
came to a conclusion that they could never be a couple in
traditional sense, but they both enjoy each others company and like
each other enough to stay 'together'. And once again I'm saddened by
the fact that they loose another member of their 'gang'. It's very
Scandinavian of Lindqvist to remind us that life is fleeting, and anything can end it sooner
than it began. The presence of death is a very popular subject in
Scandinavian works. I don't know why, so please don't ask me. (maybe it's the melancholy factor?).
Eli has been very busy when she finally
founds Håkan in a hospital. He is very much alive but badly
disfigured, hence he has been able to conceal Eli from the
authorities. Håkan asks Eli to end his life, but right before Eli
can finish the task, someone comes in forcing her to stop so she leaves. Håkan leaps of the open window, killing himself in the
process. Naaah I'm just kidding, he doesn't die, instead he later
turns into a middless vampire who is fueled by his obsession with
Eli. Bad people always get what's coming to them. Oh
the irony!
Back to Oskar. He has already began to
fall in love with Eli, when he discovers that she is a vampire, and the man he once saw was 'the ritual murderer' who supplies Eli
with blood. PLOT TWIST. Eli explains that she is not in fact a girl,
but a boy named Elias and he was castrated during his turning ritual.
He wears girl's clothes to disguise himself. Oskar bolts, but later
decides to stick with the only friend he has ever had.
Eli, 'shunned' by Oskar, goes to the
air-raid shelter and meets Håkan by chance. Håkan in his insane
tantrum hurls himself at Eli and tries to force sexual intercourse on
him. Eli fights Håkan off and managed to lock him in a..basement?
Another room in the air-raid shelter? Eli leaves and we learn that
Tommy is now locked in the room with the senseless Håkan. Håkan is
later killed by Tommy in rather traumatizing way (Tommy slowly beats
Håkan to a bloody pulp, literally).
Back to Oskar. He is now convinced that
he wants to remain friends with Eli, even though Elias is a boy and a
vampire. He sneeks in to Eli's apartment and finds him sleeping in a
bath tub filled with blood. Oskar goes to sleep on the sofa. Later
Jocke walks in and attempts to kills Eli. But Oskar wakes Eli up and
Eli kills Jocke. I'm now feeling very passive-agressive about this.
Here we have a ten-year-old wee monster boy who totally fucked up 3
people's lives. Not to mention the other three who are now left
grieving for their lost friends. Eli has no idea what he has done.
Although he is becoming a little more thoughtful because for the
first time Eli goes to buy blood. Before Håkan caught him, he
bought and drank little bit of Tommy's blood. So we can assume that
Eli is trying to make an effort not to kill for food anymore (that's
how we vegetarians feel. Why are there so few of us still?). Still to me Eli is really uninspired and
impersonal character. Actually I find him the most boring character
in the book. I groaned a little when ever the story followed Eli.
It's clear that he is emotionally and personally constipated
character who finds loneliness oh-so-killing. Really --_-- there
isn't a single vampire/monster in stories who isn't tormented by
loneliness (well except Mr. Hyde). And somehow some of the other writers are able to get
past that little quirk, giving us interesting vampires.
Buuuut....
Lindqvist kinda dropped the ball with Elias. He is not interesting because he
has no personality! Sure it's endearing to watch Eli and Oskar become
friends, and it's even more endearing and heart warming since Oskar
had no friends before. But it doesn't change the fact that Elias is an impersonal monster and
nothing more. Although it is releaving to see Oskar make true friends
with somebody at last.
Oskar has been 'training' to stand up for his bullies and his friendship with Eli gives him new
courage to finally fight back. He manages to really hurt the worst
bully and accidentally sends their classroom on fire (Oskar sneaks in
to the school one night and burns the bullies' desks plus half the
classroom by accident). The next day Oskar goes to the school in the
evening to workout with his gym teacher and fellow students. The
bullies sneek in and knock down the teacher. They proceed to burn and
drown Oskar in the swimming pool (indoors). While the other kids
watch Oskar is nearly killed BUT LUCKILY Eli bursts in, rips the
bullies' heads clean off and takes Oskar with him. One the last page,
Oskar is travelling (I forgot where he's going) with Eli's stuff and
money and we get a hint that Eli is waiting for him at his
destination.
Although it may seem that
Lindqvist is dragging the story and the stuff that happen don't really mean a
thing, they really are building towards a bigger conclusion. I know,
I know it can get frustrating to read about characters like Tommy's
future stepfather (it's funny, after killing Håkan Tommy probably
turned religious like his mother and future stepfather me thinks ;D),
but believe me when I say that Lindqvist makes interesting story structure and..umm inner dialogue. The characters think a lot,
but fear not, Lindqvist's style makes it an interesting read. However what I really liked about this story was its sense of reality. When I told my BFF about this book he immediately dissed it because it didn't seem to make any sense to him at all. Perhaps the monster Håkan isn't that realistic, but when Oskar tries to befriend Eli, or when he is thinking to himself that he can't afford new winter shoes this year either, it's these bits that make the story so realistic. Plus I really really like the setting, that the story is based in Sweden and not some place else (ALTHOUGH it is such a cliche of the writer to situate the story in his/her home country) Like I said before, all the
people in the book get more or less involved with each other. It's quite fascinating to read how their lives become
entangled.
I know that Lindqvist is trying to build this idea of every character in the book being a
victim, but I am more interested in how the character influence each
other's lives.
As far as vampire books go, this is
the best one I have read. And you should know that I have read MANY,
repeat, MANY vampire books. Låt den rätte komma in (Let the
right one in) doesn't scream 'vampire', which may dissapoint some
people, but come on, how many actually good vampire books have you
read? Come at me bro, how many!!??
This story is daunting, it's thrilling
even scary at times, plus you can't denye the fact that every single
character in the story could exist in real life (even Elias if you
choose to believe in vampires). All in all I was not dissapointed
with this story. Lindqvist's writing style is interesting and he doesn't do the 'say it
figuratively' thing that has taken hold of many writers *caugh*
(British house mom with SM fantasies) *caugh*. In fact I think you'll
find that Lindqvist's
style differs from anything you have ever read before. That have been
said, I really enjoyed this book and I'll most likely read it again.
Hope you enjoyed my review on Låt
den rätte komma in and stay tuned for the artist of the month.
Cheers and byes!
A.P
