The Stephen King of Sweden

Do some research on John Ajvide Lindqvist and you will sooner or later read that he is
"Sweden's Stephen King." Probably sooner rather than later, given the long half-life of quotable
blurbs. In fact, this is such a promising marketing label, that Lindqvist’s US publisher puts it on
the back cover of Let the Right One In, the author’s debut 2004 novel.

I can’t really blame them. Stephen King has sold roughly 350
million books over the years and has loyal readers all around
the world. What publishing house wouldn’t want a piece of that
action? And Nordic genre fiction—especially the dark and twisted
kind—has been in ascendancy for more than decade. If we are
looking to crown a new King, why not turn to Sweden, where
they still profess allegiance to the trappings of monarchy.
(A synchronicity to consider: Carl XVI Gustaf, the King of Sweden
was born around the same time as Stephen King, and became
monarch shortly after the publication of the latter’s first novel.)

And, at first glance, Lindqvist’s work bears some striking
similarities to King’s. Let the Right One In reveals its author’s
proficiency in juggling different subplots and marshaling a small
army of characters in a kaleidoscopic narrative. King proved
himself a master of this pointillistic style from the start of his
career—check out his debut novel Carrie and admire how deftly,
even when he was an unproven novice, he managed to relate a gruesome horror story with a
quasi-avant garde style, fragmented and chronologically convoluted, without ever losing the
reader or the thread of the plot. Lindqvist follows in the same footsteps, boldly adjusting his
form to meet the needs of his content. Some of his subchapters are just a few paragraphs, or in
one instance just a single sentence. The focal point, meanwhile, constantly shifts among a half-
dozen major characters, and around twenty significant secondary personages.

The main plot centers on a series of ritual killings that are puzzling authorities and generating
overheated newspaper copy. Victims are found drained of blood, and even after tests and a
thorough investigation, the police lack a single suspect. Against this background, Lindqvist
relates the story of young boy named Oskar, bullied at school and dreaming of revenge, and his
neighbor, the mysterious Eli. Eli has the appearance of a fragile and sickly young girl. But looks
are deceiving. Almost everything the reader assumes about Eli will prove to be wrong during the
course of this novel.

From this starting point, Lindqvist branches off into a series of noir-ish subplots. These relate
to Oskar’s troubled situation at school and home, Eli’s dysfunctional relationship with her
apparent father, and the comings and goings of various victims and their loved ones. Lindqvist
rarely stays with any of these stories for more than a few pages at a time, but he relentlessly
pushes each forward over the course of several hundred pages.

Ah, but here the similarity with King ends. Lindqvist’s characters are mostly stick figures,
puppets to advance the story with little substance beyond their pre-ordained roles—victim,
bully, dupe, father figure, enabler, and so forth. The most well-constructed personage in the
book is Eli—here Lindqvist takes some pains to enlist the readers’ sympathies for his childlike
bloodsucker. And I give him some credit for anticipating a few of the memes of the Twilight
saga, launched a few months after the publication of Let the Right One In. But the idea of a
romantic, troubled vampire is hardly a novelty—you can trace it back to 1800 and Johann
Ludwig Tieck "Wake Not the Dead" and Anne Rice perfected this subgenre some forty years
ago. Lindqvist tries to add a few new twists, but Eli is not a strong enough presence to serve as
the powerful emotional center to the story.

Compare this with, for example, Stephen King's It. Here King has such confidence in his
writing that he devotes a hundred pages to describing his key characters going through the
motions of packing and preparing to travel back to their home town—where the main action of
the novel transpires. Most genre authors would devote no more than a few pages to this
interlude, but King knows that his characters are so compelling that the reader will enjoy the
back story and the details of their various domestic situations. And he’s absolutely right. King
may be famous as a horror writer, but he doesn't need the horror to hold his audience—he
could have succeeded in any other genre or style, because his mastery of the building blocks of
storytelling is so complete. And when he does arrive at the scarier parts of the story, his readers
are all the more riveted because they developed a personal attachment to his characters during
these preparatory stages.

Lindqvist is not quite so self-assured. He believes that the bloody scenes of murder and
vengeance are the anchors of his storytelling, and everything in-between works to get you to
these key junctures. The writing here is mostly lackluster, and rarely goes much beyond
conveying the essential details of plot. And, true, plot is essential to a genre novel, but there are
plenty of horror and suspense novelists with strong, well-developed prose styles yet operate at a
consistently higher level. Check out, for example, the works of Kathe Koja, Elizabeth Hand,
David Wong, or the aforementioned King and Rice. The best horror authors of the current day
realize—just as the medical profession learned a century ago—that mere bloodletting leads more
often to weakness than vigor.

Lindqvist compensates to some extent through his skill at pacing, the range of the subplots, and
the sheer boldness of his imagination. Some of the macabre twists—for example, the vampire
without a face, or the spontaneous combustion scene—will stay with you long after you finished
the book. Although, you may wish that they would disappear down the memory hole.

I’m not surprised that Let the Right One In served as inspiration for two successful movies.
Director Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 film adaptation of the novel won a number of awards, and
spurred an Americanized version—the setting switched from Sweden to New Mexico—with the
2010 film Let Me In. Stephen King called the latter “the best American horror film in the last
20 years.” Alas, moviegoers disagreed. The film generated only $24 million in worldwide
revenues despite distribution in more than 1,500 theaters.

Even so, if you view Lindqvist’s book as a script treatment, a preparation for translation on to
the screen, it succeeds much better than as a standalone novel. His story possesses a strong
visual component, and the threadbare prose is no longer an handicap when the tale is projected
is realized in cinematic form. In this instance, you are advised to go straight to the movie
versions, and bypass the book.

Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from
Basic Books.

Publication Date: November 6, 2016

This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia

My Year of Horrible Reading

Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker

Week 2:
T he Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

Week 3:
T ales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe

Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King

Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector

Week 6:
T ales
By H.P. Lovecraft

Week 7:
T he Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty

Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill

Week 9:
N ausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre

Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson

Week 11:
G host Stories of Henry James
By Henry James

Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice

Week 13:
A merican Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis

Week 14:
L ast Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann

Week 15:
G host Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James

Week 16:
R osemary's Baby
By Ira Levin

Week 17:
T he King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers

Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier

Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith

Week 21
O ff Season
by Jack Ketchum

Week 22
B ooks of Blood, Vols. 1-3
by Clive Barker

Week 23
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris

Week 24
T he Orange Eats Creeps
by Grace Krilanovich

Week 25
S trange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 26
P sycho
by Robert Bloch

Week 27
F ledgling
by Octavia E. Butler

Week 28
D emons by Daylight
by Ramsey Campbell

Week 29
T he Complete Short Stories
by Ambrose Bierce

Week 30
P et Sematary
by Stephen King

Week 31
O ur Lady of Darkness
by Fritz Leiber

Week 32
G rendel
by John Gardner

Week 33
W hite is for Witching
by Helen Oyeyemi

Week 34
T he Wasp Factory
by Iain Banks

Week 35
K ing Kong
by Edgar Wallace

Week 36
T he Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole

Week 37
The J ohn Silence Stories
by Algernon Blackwood

Week 38
The M agic Toyshop
by Angela Carter

Week 39
The O ther
by Thomas Tryon

Week 40
N ever Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Week 41
G host Story
by Peter Straub

Week 42
J ohn Dies at the End
by David Wong

Week 43
T he Great God Pan
by Arthur Machen

Week 44
The C ipher
by Kathe Koja

Week 45
L et the Right One In
by John Ajvide Lindqvist