Little Star [Hardcover]

Little Star is my first novel by Swedish horror sensation, John Ajvide Lindqvist. I have copies of all his books, except unbelievably, Let The Right One In. But so far this is the first of them I've actually read. Following his famous debut, Lindqvist has garnered a lot of praise, and achieved a strong reputation in a relatively short time frame. With Little Star, finally, I can see why. I've read no recent horror novel quite like it.

This story is about two outcast girls with very similar names. The first of these is Theres. Theres was abandoned in a wood as a baby, discarded like trash. By chance, she is discovered by Lennart Calderstrom, a former Swedish pop star. Lennart takes the baby back to his wife, and together they decide to keep the "Little One" and raise her as their own. But they do not adopt her, or raise her in any normal lifestyle, instead they keep her hidden in a cellar. The other girl, Teresa, appears to have had a more normal upbringing, but she too is a misfit, a person who feels quite alienated from her peers and society at large.

The first section of the book focuses exclusively on the bizarre, Theres. Here, we witness the early years of her strange life and the nature of her new dysfunctional family. Theres, with her weird note perfect signing, is so strange in fact, that during this section I found myself wondering if she might later be revealed to be something other than human. I'll not give away any spoilers, but will say that Lindqvist actually doesn't answer too many questions himself, even at the end.

A little further into the book and we move on from Theres for a time, and are introduced to the other girl, Teresa. Her social isolation seems much more conventional. We see how she struggles to relate to her parents as well as others of her own age, with the notable exception of a neighbouring boy, Johannes. We learn that she has always felt different and apart from other people, and of her fixation on death and the darker aspects of life. We also see how she is bullied at school by the popular kids. With Teresa, unlike Theres, you feel you know the sort of kid she is. Later, Teresa develops something of a fixation for Theres when she sees her bizarre performances on reality pop show, Idol. Of course, the two girls inevitably meet, having connected over an Internet forum, and when they do, they form a strong bond which eventually evolves into the nexus of a larger group of outcast girls.

Little Star is a very unusual novel. In places reminiscent of We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, touching as it does upon some of the same issues as that work. There is something remarkably uncomfortable about this book, a kind of pervasive wrongness that permeates the text, and clearly survived the translation from Swedish to English very well. I find it difficult to say precisely why this book has that effect. Some elements are obvious: it's graphically brutal in places, and that brutality is performed by children who might otherwise be considered angelic, such as Theres with her golden hair and melodic voice. This certainly is a factor. Less obviously, I think it's the way the novel skilfully highlights the superficial nature of many societal values, and the way in which the violent disaffection of the young girls takes on an almost spiritual dimension in response.

Some people may be put off by the lack of overt supernatural elements or by the fact that the book never really answers your questions. But in my view, Lindqvist has created one of the best horror novels of recent times. A deeply unsettling, finely tuned, twisted hymn to social alienation. All that, and Abba too... Highly recommended.

I approached this new novel by John Ajvide Lindquist with some trepidation. I'd really loved Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead, not least because they managed to do something new and unexpected with the (over)familiar horror archetypes of the vampire and the zombie, but hadn't much cared for Harbour, which started well but went progressively downhill as it headed toward its apocalyptic finale.

Thankfully, Little Star sees Linquist back on form, with the horrors emerging slowly from the cracks in modern society: lost souls haunting the internet, children running wild in the streets, the ritual humiliations meted out by TV talent shows. As with all the best horror novels, it's up to the reader to decide if there is anything supernatural behind all this.

For me (and this might be considered a spoiler, although it doesn't give away anything of the plot) Little Star is Lindquist's take on yet another classic horror character: the werewolf. This is not to say that any of the characters are lycanthropes in the accepted sense of a person who turns into a wolf during the full moon, but more the fact that the 'monsters' are forces of nature capable of unleashing their inner beasts when circumstances dictate. And like all werewolves, they are as much figures of sadness as of fear.

John Ajvide Lindqvist hit the ground running with the excellent Let The Right One In, which resurrected the tired vampire trope into a new, darker being, showing the paranormal romancers how it should be done. He somehow managed to maintain the pace with the "difficult" second and third novels, Handling The Undead and Harbour and now along comes Little Star and what do you know, he's only gone and done it again.

The plot of Little Star is at once both beautifully simple and incredibly complex. The story is a simple tale of an abandoned child and the family who finds her but beneath that surface is an incredibly weird tale which I can't outline here without spoiling, so I won't. Suffice to say that singing babies, serial killing children and Abba feature heavily in what may well be the most bizarre, yet compelling tale I have read in a long time.

Perhaps it's the Scandinavian darkness that pervades Lindqvist's writing or maybe he is channelling the legacy of the Grimms but this tale, with it's overtones of raw nature and evil adults has the qualities of a dark fairytale before spiralling into gory murder, American Psycho meets Snow White. Remember also, this is a translation and clearly I have no idea how closely it matches the original but whether by design or chance the book has an otherworldly feel, the phrasing, the timing everything is
imbued with an oddness which matches and compliments the mood of the book perfectly.

The complex themes explored here, nature versus nurture, the loss of childhood innocence, selfishness in the pursuit of fame, animal instincts are all beautifully woven into the plot without stifling the story. The book is also full of memorable scenes from the fairytale beginning to the Carrie like ending but all written in Lindqvist's engaging prose so they retain that feeling of originality.

There are some who might criticise the book for what it doesn't tell us. There are several huge conceits that the reader has to go along with, the true nature of the central character being the most significant, but for this reader that adds to the mystery. Life would be boring if every magician explained his tricks and I for one am glad that Lindqvist has retained the mystery and intrigue which is as important to this book as the revelations.

A wonderful storyteller and a wonderful story are a pretty powerful combination and as long as John Ajvide Lindqvist carries on telling stories this good and this well, I will be at the front of the queue to buy them.