"I Am Behind You" by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Year of Publication:  2014
Number of Pages:  405
Genre:  Horror

This horror novel is the sixth book from Swedish stand-up comedian turned author John Ajvide Lindqvist to be translated into English.  Four families on caravan holidays wake up one morning to find the rest of their campsite has vanished. In fact everything has vanished, they are totally alone in the middle of a seemingly endless blank, flat field, where, despite clear bright blue summer skies, there is no sun, and the grass is the exact same height.  Where are they?  How did they get there? Why are they there? and, more importantly, how can they get back?  Running low on food and supplies, their situation is desperate, but there is something else out there.  Something that knows their worst mistakes and deepest desires, and will confront them with their darkest dreams and worst fears, and something even worse.

Lindqvist is still probably best known for his debut novel, Let the Right One In (2004) which was  adapted as an acclaimed Swedish film in 2008 and a successful US remake, Let Me In (2010).  With Let the Right One In and his subsequent books, there can be little doubt that John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of the most interesting modern writers working in horror.  The characters in this book start off wondering where they are and how they got there, and are little the wiser by the end of it.  For every question that is answered, another is posed, and it really seems to just stop dead.  However, this is the first volume in a planned trilogy, so presumably we'll find out what happens later.  The ending, though is a fairly minor issue when this is such a chilling, gripping novel and genuinely disturbing.  It's full of dark humour and often graphic gore.  The frequently surreal happenings in the book work because the  characters are interesting and well-drawn, with their past lives depicted in flashback.  Lindqvist is frequently compared to Stephen King, and this has a lot of King-like elements to it, with the disparate collection of ordinary people having to band together against horrific adversaries, although it's more like if Stephen King had ever collaborated with Ingmar Bergman, because it has a very strong philosophical element to it.  Lindqvist his a particular gift for writing about children and one of the child characters, six year old Molly is one of the most terrifying characters you're likely to read about this year.  This is definitely recommended.

"Little Star" by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Year of Publication:  2011
Number of Pages:  533 pages
Genre:  Horror, thriller

This is the fourth novel from Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, who is probably best known for his debut novel Let the Right One In (2004) which has already become something of a modern classic of vampire literature.  This book differs from his previous three in that it is not really a supernatural horror novel.  The only vaguely supernatural element in the book is Theres, a girl who is found abandoned in the woods as a baby, and has a unique talent for singing pitch-perfect notes.  Found by a once successful singer-songwriter, who sees in Theres the opportunity for raising the perfect musical machine.  She eventually finds a soulmate however, in unhappy teenage poet Teresa.  What follows is heartbreaking, shocking and deeply disturbing.

At times coming across like an even darker take on the 1994 movie Heavenly Creatures this is also a savagely satirical take on the music industry, reality television, internet forums and the cult of fame.  Lindqvist is a powerful writer and has a gift for creating characters that the reader cannot help but sympathise with no matter how unpleasant their actions might be.  He tends to be at his best when he is concetrating on a small number of central characters, and here the book focusses primarily on the two girls.  The storyline is gripping and full of suspense.  This is probably Lindqvist's best book to date, and is one of the best horror novels that I have come across in a very long time.  Full of memorable characters, and some shockingly violent set-pieces, this is one that will be devoured in great, hungry chunks.

Definitely check this one out, although The X-Factor and Abba will never be the same to you again.

"Harbour" by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Year of Publication: 2008
Number of Pages: 650 pages
Genre: Horror, supernatural, drama

Summary: Every year Anders and his wife Cecilia and six year old daughter Maja go on holiday to the island of Dommaro off the coast of Sweden, where Anders and Cecilia spent summers as children. However tragedy strikes when Maja vanishes in plain sight and in broad daylight. No trace of her is found and there is nowhere she could have fallen or hidden, it is simply as if she disappeared.
Two years later, Anders' life has fallen apart. Divorced from his wife and drinking heavily, he is lost in guilt and self-pity. Finally realising that he has hit rock bottom, he returns to Dommaro where his grandfather Simon, a one-time magician, still lives.
Returning to his old holiday home, Anders attempts to find out once and for all what happened to his daughter. However, he quickly comes to believe that Maja's still there and trying to communicate with him. However, Dommaro, which has a long and disturbing history of strange occurances and disappearances, is plagued by bizarre happenings as malevolent ghostly figures cruise around on mopeds, mysterious acts of arson flare up all over the island, and the residents begin to act in increasingly strange and violent ways.
Anders and Simon soon find themselves pitted against a powerful and ancient force lurking in the waters around the island. A force which demands sacrifice.

Summary: This is the third novel by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist to be translated into English following Let the Right One In (2004) and Handling the Undead (2006). After dealing with vampires and zombies in his previous works, Lindqvist here deals with old superstitions and traditions dealing with the sea, as well as ghosts and spirits.
The main narrative of the book covers a number of weeks but is full of flashbacks, and digressions. It has a pretty epic scope and covers a large number of events and characters. The main flaw with the novel is that not all of the digressions and sub plots work and some of it take away from the pace of the novel. Mostly however it works well and the novel is a tense and at times genuinely chilling piece of work. Many of Lindqvist's characters and events are pretty memorable, with the ghosts riding mopeds and talking in quotes from The Smiths being a special standout (Lindqvist himself is a huge Morrissey fan).
Lindqvist has been described as "the Swedish Stephen King" which isn't really very fair, because his style and plots are very much his own. What he does share with King though is a real feel for the rhythms of daily life and an understanding of character.
Delivering traditional gothic horror thrills, with a uniquely contemporary Scandinavian flavour, Lindqvist is one of the most important new writers to emerge in the field of horror in the past decade and is well worth checking out, if you haven't already.

"Handling the Undead" by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Year of Publication: 2005
Number of Pages: 364 pages
Genre: Horror, supernatural, zombie

Summary: Stockholm, August 2002: The city swelters under a severe heatwave, everyone in the city suffers from a splitting headache and no electrical device can be turned off once it is switched on. Then the city's dead return to life.
David is a stand-up comedian who is happily married to children's book author Eva, and the couple have a ten year old son, Magnus. The night that the dead come back, Eva's car hits an elk and she is killed. When David goes to identify her body, he notices it start moving.
Gustav Mahler is a freelance journalist who is still grieving for the death of his grandson, Elias, a month previously. Mahler's daughter, Anna, the dead boy's mother, is so grief-stricken she barely ever leaves her home, and he cares for her despite their mutual resentment. When he learns of the resurrection, Mahler has a glimmer of hope that the family can be reunited.
Rebellious teenage goth Flora shares a deep psychic bond with her devoutly religious mother, Elvy. When they are visited by Elvy's recently deceased husband, the two have very different ideas as to what the events mean.
Meanwhile scientists, city officials, newspaper pundits and the Government try to discover what is happening in Stockholm, and what can be done about it.

Opinions: From the title you could be forgiven for thinking that this is 364 pages of gore-drenched, flesh chomping zombie action when, in fact, John Lindqvist's follow up to the best-selling Let the Right One In is a dark and moving meditation on grief, love, loss and hate. That's not to say that there isn't plenty of gruesome horror, but mostly it's about the reactions of people to the return of their loved ones. The book moves between four storylines, and the frequent cross-cutting means the book never really gets dull. Unlike most zombie stories, the living dead in this novel are not essentially aggressive, although they do have limited mind-reading abilities and react to "negative" emotions such as hate, fear and anger, while any living human who is around them for too long also develops mind-reading abilities. The book takes it's time getting going, and the frankly bizarre climax is a bit abrupt and unsatisfactory. However, for the most part, this is a strong, well-written book. Lindqvist has an eye for the details of everyday life and, as with Let the Right One In, this book benefits enormously from his ability to ground the supernatural elements in a recognisable urban reality. Lindqvist also has a good feel for character and makes the book at times a genuinely moving experience, which is as much about intolerance and family relationships as it is about shambling zombies. Also, while not being particularly scary, the book does have enough action and suspense to satisfy genre fans.

Let Me In

Year: 2010
Director: Matt Reeves
Screenplay: Matt Reeves, based on the novel and screenplay Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Cara Buono
Running Time: 116 minutes
Genre: Horror, drama

Summary: In March, 1983, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, twelve year old Owen (Smit-McPhee) lives with his religious, alcoholic mother (Buono), who largely ignores him, on a depressing housing estate. He is also frequenty bullied at school. One night he meets a new neighbour, Abby (Moretz), a seemingly ordinary twelve year old girl, who lives with an elderly man (Jenkins) assumed to be her father. A strong friendship soon blossoms between Owen and Abby until he learns that Abby is, in fact, a vampire, and her "father" is behind a brutal series of ritualistic killings in the local area which he has done to provide her with the blood she needs.

Opinions: The 2004 novel Let the Right One In by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist has previously been adapted as a critically acclaimed and successful Swedish film directed by Tomas Alfredson, and now an English-language version has been made. It's hard not to feel cynical when a successful foreign language film is given an English-language remake, especially when it's only been a couple of years since the release of the Swedish film. In fact, Alfredson was, understandably, very angry at the news that his film was being remade on the grounds that he thought a film should only be remade if there was something wrong with the original and he didn't think that there was anything wrong ith his film, and he is perfectly correct that there is nothing wrong with the earlier film.
However, leaving that aside, Let Me In is a very good film in it's own right. For the most part it sticks very closely to the earlier film and fairly faithful to the original novel (both movie versions excise the novel's gruesome zombie sub-plot). The film has a good sense of time and place with striking visuals of the snow-bathed housing estate. Director Reeves, best known for the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, delivers some striking scenes, in particular a sequence where the camera is in the back seat of a crashing car. He also has some of the more traditional horror movie scares happening in the background of scenes, and although there are computer generated special effects used, they are mostly fairly subtle. The movie's main strengths are in superb performances from Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz in the lead roles who make their characters if anything even more engaging and sympathetic then their Swedish counterparts.
While sticking a little bit too close to the original to really become it's own thing, this is a fine, well-made movie that deserves a wider audience than traditional horror audiences and should appeal to fans of the original as well as newcomers.


Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz in Let Me In

Let the Right One In

Year: 2008
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Screenplay: John Ajvide Lindqvist based on his novel.
Starring: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Peter Carlberg and Ika Nord
Running Time: 114 minutes
Genre: Horror, vampire, romance, coming of age

Summary: Set in the Backeberg suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, in 1981, the film follows twelve year old Oskar (Hedebrant) a lonely boy who is frequently bullied by his classmates and bored with his life on a dull housing estate. One night he meets a mysterious girl named Eli (Leandersson) who lives next door to him with an older man, Hakan (Ragnar). As a friendship grows between them, Oskar discovers that Eli is in fact a 200 year old vampire who is forever trapped as a child and has a desperate thirst for human blood.

Opinions: This movie is based on the successful novel of the ame name by John Avijde Lindqvist and the film largely sticks very closely to the source material. The main differences are that several of the book's subplots have been cut from the film and a lot of elements have been heavily toned down, although none of the changes really affect the central storyline and are unlikely to bother most viewers. While the film has it's share of gore and violence it is by no means a gruesome or excessively violent film. It's really a character driven story about loneliness and friendship. The movie gets a lot of milage from the many snowbound icy landscapes it features (which is faithful to the imagery in the novel). The director, Tomas Alfredson, who was unfamiliar with horror and vampire films, handles the material well and stylishly with a good eye for detail and the minutiae and mundanity of everyday life which helps ground the supernatural elements in a recognisable reality, and makes it all the more effective. The acting, particularly from the two young leads, is really superb, with Lina Leandersson especially noteworthy making her pint sized blood-sucker both scary and sympathetic, often at the same time. Fans of the book will doubtless love the film, but it is good enough to transfer beyond the horror fans. Definitely recommended. Check it out.
An English language remake is on the way entitled Let Me In, directed by Michael Reeves (of Cloverfield fame) and starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz with the scene of the action shifted to New Mexico.

"Let the Right One In" by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Year of Publication: 2004
Number of Pages: 519 pages
Genre: Horror, vampire, coming of age

Summary: The story is set in Blackeberg a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden in 1981. Twelve year old Oskar Eriksson is an outsider with few friends, who is bullied at school, misses his absent father and is bored of his life in a Blackeberg housing scheme. However he is fascinated by the reports of a killer on the loose who is butchering local teens. One evening he meets a mysterious girl called Eli who lives in the flat next door with a man who is apparently her father. Oskar and Eli soon strike up a strong friendship which quickly blossoms into a romance. However Eli has a disturbing secret. She is a two hundred year old vampire who is forever trapped as a twelve year old and cursed with an endless thirst for human blood.

Opinions: This book was an instant cult hit in it's native Sweden and it's author has been described as "the new Stephen King" (which is a description that seems to be applied to almost every successful new horror author). However in Lindqvist's case the comparison is quite accurate. Like Stephen King he has a very strong sense of time and place. The drabness and boredom of Oskar's daily life is strikingly evoked. The mundanity of the book's setting makes the horror all the more affecting and believable. Linqvist also has a strong sense of character with even fairly minor characters being well drawn with realistic personalities. This is especially striking with the vampire-child Eli who is both terrifying and sympathetic often at the same time. The book doesn't skimp on the horror elements either having some very graphic violence in places. However it does deserve points for making the all-too familiar figure of the vampire disturbing again. The book takes a while to get into it's stride but when it does it delivers gripping horror thrills as well as a genuinely moving coming of age story. Definitely recommended.
The book was adapted to a critically acclaimed Swedish film in 2008 called Let the Right One In, directed by Tomas Alfredson and starring Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson. An English language adaptation called Let Me In is due for release, directed by Matt Reeves and starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz.