Oh no. Another vampire story. Oh wait. This one has a paedophile in it. Not your typical vampire story then, perhaps?

Thirteen-year-old Oskar lives in the snowy Stockholm suburb Blackeberg with his mother. He gets picked on by the class bullies a fair bit. But when he’s not cornered in the toilet, forced to squeal like a pig for his cruel classmates, Oskar is cutting out gory newspaper clippings of murders for his scrapbook, or shoplifting hunting knives to act out vengeful scenarios against his tormentors in the surrounding forests.

So when the slightly disturbed young boy meets his next door neighbour, the strange little girl Eli, who sometimes smells a little funny and can sit outside in sub-zero weather in just a singlet, the two children begin to form a friendship.

The thing with Let The Right One In is that while it’s about vampires the crux of the narrative: the development of this seemingly innocent friendship and romance between Eli and Oskar, is what really drives it.

Sure, there are interwoven stories: Tommy, the neighbour, Hakan, Eli’s…guardian…who brings her sustenance, in return for the promise of something more (he’s the paedophile I mentioned in the first paragraph), and middle-aged Virginia, whose frustrations with her partner, the non-committal Lacke, becomes the least of her problems when a small girl drops onto her back from a tree and doesn’t let go (it’s Eli, if you were wondering). But none of the other characters have the same charm as Oskar. Even Eli, with her strange cat-like black eyes and simple matter-of-fact manner, pales in comparison to Oskar.

As endearing as Oskar is (despite his slightly disturbing murderous aspirations), there just aren’t enough likable characters in this story to make it worth investing emotionally in. What others have described as cinematic falls flat in the absence of real characters.

Its violence is sporadic, and infrequent enough for me to almost question the placing of this in the horror genre. For anyone who has seen the film adaptation, you may feel the director had similar thoughts. But the imagery in the novel is vivid and delicious as well; one of those things that sometimes gets lost in film:

“The sun threw itself over him like a hungry lion, biting into his back. [He] almost lost his balance as he was thrown forward by the sun’s howling force. Nature vomited its disgust at his transgression; to show himself in sunlight for even one second.” (432)

It’s unfair to dismiss this book altogether. It explores its themes bravely, even though this can sometimes be a little disjointing. And, of course, completely disturbing in an entirely understated way, perhaps something that other ‘horror’ writers might want to notice. Perhaps not for those already on vampire overload, but a nice distraction from the trashy books out there and a surprisingly twisted vampire “romance”.