13

Nov

~john ajvide lindvist~ let the right one in

ltroiRead it in: probably around two weeks (was quite a while ago, I don’t really remember)

So I never usually do reviews on books that I read more than two years ago, but then I realised I hadn’t done one on this book and, well, it made such an impression on me that I thought I should, even after so long.  This was probably the most frightening book I have ever read – well, perhaps it comes equal first with The Shining, but it was damn scary!

I don’t know what it is about Swedish authors, but they always seem to be genre masters.  I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the rest of the series a couple of years ago and found myself completely hooked on that.  Although I’m not sure what type of literature comes out of the country (probably insanely good literature), I’ve only read Swedish books that are placed very much within a particular genre, and they have all carried the themes of that genre to perfection.  Let the Right One In could well be the best example of this.

The problem with this book is that everyone knows it now.  They’ve seen the American remake of the film, and perhaps the Swedish original if they’re lucky (Swedish is much better, just saying…) but they leave it at that.  They know the story.  It’s disturbing, supernatural and oddly cute-sy in parts.  But the book is another world altogether.  You think the film is scary?  Multiply that by ten and perhaps you’ll be prepared for the scariness of the book.

So maybe this is a good time to talk about the difference between horror movies and horror novels.  I ask you, which is scarier?  Alright, so I’ve copped out of this one a bit.  I haven’t watched a full horror movie since my boyfriend made me watch The Sixth Sense hoping that I’d cuddle him out of fear.  It didn’t work.  And I didn’t watch the film either, I just watched the inside of my pillow and noted the scary sound effects with a feeling of horror.  So, to be honest, reading horror novels is the closest I get to the horror experience.  Perhaps I think it’s not as bad as watching a movie.  But it is, oh it is.

If a horror writer is a good horror writer, his powers of description are his biggest ally.  Like that scene in The Shining where there’s a dead woman in the bathtub and Stephen King, rather than describe the image of the grisly corpse moving by itself, allows you to hear the soft footsteps on the carpet, to smell the scent of soap mixed with decay until you don’t need a description of what it looks like, you can already hear it and smell it and it’s disgusting and frightening and you can’t take it anymore.  It’s the same with Lindvist.  There are a couple of scenes that completely unnerved me.  I’d never been so frightened in my life.  I snapped the book shut in the same way I close a tab with a barrage of clicks when the horror movie trailer gets too much  (that’s right, since my experience with The Sixth Sense, I’ve only worked up the courage to watch trailers).

It’s incredible just how much the films (even the Swedish one) differ from the book.  It’s as if they censored it completely.  One storyline ends quite abruptly and harmlessly in the film; in the book this is continued on and on and becomes one of the most disturbing aspects of the book.  I actually find it hard to believe they skipped it out completely in both films.  It becomes one of the most important aspects of the book, and definitely the most frightening.

I read this during my period of reading a lot of horror books – mostly Stephen Kings.  During this period, I found that the best horror books weren’t the ones with the most ghosts or monsters or strange, unexplained happenings.  I found that the best ones were those that had almost human characters.  Carrie was a good example of this, and I still think it’s King’s best work.  Similarly, in Let the Right One In, every character isn’t just good and isn’t just evil, but is a strange mix between the two.  Another thing that I also love is the way that Lindvist plays with the child as a character.  Lindvist’s child characters are dark and disturbing.  They think things we would not expect a child to think and they surprise us in ways perhaps we don’t want to be surprised.

In short, Let the Right One In is different.  It’s frightening, and a damned good read, but if you’re into horror books then you should definitely read this one because it has all the aspects of a good horror, and more.

Read it if you: like horror, have watched either the American remake or the Swedish original (ESPECIALLY if you’ve only watched the American remake), like interesting characters and evil children, want a good scare.

While reading listen to: the soundtrack (for the Swedish one), as it’s particularly good.  Here are some tracks from it, and also another from the same composer:  Johan Soderqvist, Then We Are Together, Track 21, Tannod

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Horror/Last Name L

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04

May

~stephen king~ carrie

CRead it in: maybe a week

This was the first Stephen King I ever read, and, in my opinion, the best one he’s ever written.  It was also the first one he ever wrote.  It’s a rare occasion that an author’s first work happens to be their best, that is, if the author continues on to write many, many works, the way that King has.

I find this book is set apart from others in King’s own horror genre for many different reasons.  First of all, you can sympathise with the monster – definitely not a normal trait in horror works, but one that is very valuable, I think.  It’s also quite sad.  Towards the end I felt very, very sorry for all characters involved, despite all their wrongdoings.

It also has its trademark scary bits – in this one, King loves his gore and death, hinting at an ability to give people very interesting, almost non-conformist deaths.  He’s creative with his death scenes, we see.

He also shows that he is a master of suspense.  From the first page I knew I had to read through the end.  Why?  Because the first page was a newspaper article about the ‘Black Prom’ and all the terrible things that occurred there, linked back to a seemingly harmless girl called Carrie White.  From there, we are recounted Carrie’s life throughout the year of the prom, but the text is always dotted with snippets of articles, eyewitness accounts, death reports and so on.  You just have to know what happens, and to know that in full detail, you have to read to the end.

At once, Carrie is normal and abnormal.  She has always been seen as abnormal by her classmates, and her home situation, the very skill that she is born with, makes her even more abnormal.  Yet we are able to follow her emotional journey up until the prom and see what experiences lay behind the choices that she makes.  This reveals her to be rather more human than we first suspect.  It’s this element of surprise that makes Carrie one of my favourite novels.

I know there’s a film coming out soon.  It’s supposed to be good – the trailer looks good – but please, please read the book first!  Nothing can top King’s incredible ability to recount the events of the Black Prom.  The images he uses are incredibly shocking and frightening not in the usual supernatural way, but in a gory, more realistic manner that makes this story remain with you for years and years (as it has for me).  Nothing can top King, not even the best acting, special effects, costumes, settings, whatever.  He is master of words in this book.

Read it if you: have always been curious about Stephen King but don’t want to scare the shit out of yourself, appreciate good horror that is not just plain old horror but so much more, like Stephen King but haven’t read this yet (how could you not have read it yet?!), enjoy reading good books, just read it.

While reading, listen to: Will You Love Me Tomorrow Lykke Li, Misery Hypnogaja (two totally different tracks for you)

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Horror/Last Name K

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03

May

~stephen king~ the stand

TSRead it in: around three weeks

This is the first Stephen King I’ve reviewed so far.  I’ve liked Stephen King for a while.  His plotlines are always so interesting and hooking – I’ll read the blurb on the back of the book and then I’ll just have to buy the novel and read the rest, he’s a marketing genius!  Hence I own probably a shelf’s worth of Stephen King novels, though this one would have to be the biggest.

I also got the unabridged version.  Hmm, I’m not sure whether this was a good idea or not.  Actually, I got it given to me, so I didn’t really have a choice, but it was quite long.  Over 1000 pages is very long for something I’d usually classify as horror but would probably qualify as an epic just this once.

‘The Stand’ is about a super-virus that breaks out in the United States and kills most of the population, except for a few people who are immune for some unexplained reason.  A decent part of the book is given to explaining how all the different protagonists watch all others around them die without succumbing to the disease themselves.  This is where King employs his masterful ability with gory death scenes, escapes from places filled with dead people, near misses and the like.  Then each of the characters makes his way to an almost designated place, one place for the good people, another place for the bad.  And from then on we find ourselves being recounted an epic battle between good and evil where the good eventually triumphs.

Okay, so a little cliche for King, in my opinion.  I love a good horror novel where the evil triumphs, but I suppose that isn’t really King’s style as much.  I would say he likes the good to triumph in the end, but only just.  Well, in some novels and not others.  In ‘The Shining’, ‘Misery’, ‘Gerald’s Game’ and ‘The Eye of the Dragon’ (though this one doesn’t really count as one of his horror novels) we come across this ‘good triumphing over evil’ sort of theme, though in ‘Carrie’ and ‘Thinner’ I’d say that wasn’t quite right.

It was a long, long novel.  I can’t complained, because I did get the unabridged version after all, therefore some professional already told Mr. King it was a little on the long side.  Also, although it is scary in some parts, it’s not really that scary as a whole.  Even the scary parts weren’t as scary as sections of ‘The Shining’ (but I don’t think many things can top ‘The Shining’ for scariness).  So if you’re looking for scary, there are better ones out there you can read.

This is more of an epic adventure novel.  Which was not exactly what I was looking for when I picked it up, but it’s a good epic adventure novel all the same.

Read it if you: are looking for something big to keep you occupied for a while, like the odd scary scene, like post-apocalyptic novels, enjoy scenes where people are killed in not very average ways, like a good old battle between good and evil, like long stories where you can get to know the characters and sympathise with them.

While reading, listen to: Blair Witch Soundtrack Kyle Richards, Alone Stefan Fraser, Shithole Theme Charlie Clouser, Last Man Standing People In Planes

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Horror/Last Name K

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27

Apr

~cormac mccarthy~ the road

TRRead it in: one day

There was a period almost this time last year where I read one book a day.  It was a fantastic, relaxing time.  There are some situations in which I wish I hadn’t tried to finish one whole book in such a short time period, and some where I am glad that I did.  ‘The Road’ was one book that I was glad to finish in one day.  Not because it was bad, of course – this is Cormac McCarthy, how could I find it bad?

However, I once read somewhere that this book was meant to be read without stopping, and this is easy to see.  We have no chapters, as such.  There are just scenes, one after the other, some vividly frightening, some incredibly sad, some happier than others.

For a brief synopsis, it’s about a father and son in a post-apocalyptic American setting, walking constantly to get to the sea, though they are not sure what they are going to do when they get there.  They are looking for civilisation, though the brief encounters they have with other humans are never very close to any definition of ‘civilisation’.

I haven’t seen the film of ‘The Road’, the most I’ve seen is the trailer.  But I think the book is probably better, simply because I don’t know how a film can trump this masterpiece.  Watching the trailer, I thought perhaps the film emphasised more of the horror aspects of the novel – there are some scary scenes – and not the overall feel of it.  But I’m probably wrong, having not seen the film, only the trailer.  What I want to say is that I don’t think this novel is horror in the way we classify horror to usually be.  It’s frightening and it’s one of those ones you can’t stop thinking about for hours/days/months after you’ve finished it.

It was frightening for me not only because there were parts in which they were trapped with no way of getting out, but because there was the overall intense feeling of loneliness, solitude and vanished hope.  It was incredible.  After each situation in which they were in danger, there wasn’t a feeling that, now that they had gotten themselves out, they were safe.  They were never safe and they never would be because there is nowhere to go.  It feels as if there is no one left except themselves; the other people they meet are only shadows of what humanity was like long ago.

We are able to sense this loneliness in a deeper sense because of the occasional moments of relief we are given – memories from the father of the time before the disaster, and also this wonderful scene in which they find a bunker full of things with which they can live their life comfortably – that are followed by the sheer inevitability that these cannot last, that life back in reality, walking the desolate road, will always have to resume.

This was my first Cormac McCarthy, picked up for all of five dollars at a book sale, and I was simply astounded by the prose.  I had never read anything like it in my life.  I felt that no book could compare to it, and it seemed for a long time that all other books simply paled in comparison.  Here is a little snippet of prose for you (this was the first time I found myself having to stop to write prose passages down, they were too good to forget):

‘The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.  Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.’ (page 192-3)

I love the way this passage gives us such a sense that the experiences of the characters are a part of something so much bigger than themselves, but at the same time we experience a sense of complete hopelessness and we know that there is no civilisation out there, that the entire earth is like this and that, no matter how long the pair travel along the road, they will never find what they are looking for.

I also love McCarthy’s use of long, long sentences endlessly connected by ‘and’.  Read my ‘All The Pretty Horses‘ review for some more samples and discussion of this.

At the end is a twist, however, that did indeed almost (or perhaps it did…) make me cry.

Read it if you: would like to experience something completely alien to what you’ve ever felt, want to be astounded by prose, want to be depressed, feel like you’re taking your world for granted, want to read a simply beautiful modern masterpiece, feel as if you have no faith in modern literature (this will restore your faith).

While reading, listen to: Facades Philip Glass, The Road Soundtrack Oleg Ivanov (inspired by the novel), Valtari Sigur Ros, Roslyn Bon Iver

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name M/Literature

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