Eliverse?

For discussion of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Låt den rätte komma in
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Sasutaschi
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Eliverse?

Post by Sasutaschi » Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:51 pm

I just finished "Little Star" for the first time and it was a breathtaking experience. The finale had me overwhelmed with emotion. I was saying out loud it had to come to this, this is where it all lead up to.

Thereupon I craved for more, when I realized that I still had to finish a short story in LTODD called "The Final Processing". Gleaning through the novel, I wondered if all of JAL's stories could take place in a single canon. This Eliverse (shutout to metoo) would use "Let the Right One In" as its foundation and could include any story which wouldn't contradict the former.

The first two entries would be "Let the Old Dreams Die" as it is a direct sequel and possibly "The Village on the Hill" as it payed tribute to the swimming pool incident.

The oblivious exception would be "Handling the Undead" and its aforementioned sequel, as the dead rising in 2002 would have been such an enormous event, that it would at least been mentioned in "Let the Old Dreams Die".
What is your opinion on a shared universe? Do you look upon the novels as separate entities?

Note: I have only read "Let the Right One In", "Handling the Undead", "Let the Old Dreams Die" and "Little Star" so far. Please be sure to put a spoiler tag for the other novels.
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metoo
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Re: Eliverse?

Post by metoo » Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:50 pm

Sasutaschi wrote:
Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:51 pm
What is your opinion on a shared universe? Do you look upon the novels as separate entities?
Yes, I do. Each novel and short story resides in its own universe, short of a couple of exceptions.
And I like it that way. No never-ending series of sequels and prequels and whatever other kinds of quels there might be.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Sasutaschi
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Re: Eliverse?

Post by Sasutaschi » Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:21 pm

metoo wrote:
Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:50 pm
Sasutaschi wrote:
Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:51 pm
What is your opinion on a shared universe? Do you look upon the novels as separate entities?
Yes, I do. Each novel and short story resides in its own universe, short of a couple of exceptions.
And I like it that way. No never-ending series of sequels and prequels and whatever other kinds of quels there might be.
I should have phrased that better. I'm in no way comparing JAL's brilliant novels to some cinematic universe. Nor am I trying to cram them all together into one continuous narrative. As you mentioned, each story should be regarded as its own work of art, the sequels being the sole exceptions.
Shame on me for not making my intention oblivious enough. :roll:

What I meant to say was that I enjoy imagining that some events from his novels had occurred in a single universe (Eliverse). Yet they don't necessarily affect each other narratively and are not connected. Think of it akin to our history, just because something happened in the past, doesn't mean it will affect my life or that I will even know about it. Yet it still happened.

I can't really explain why I feel this way, perhaps I just enjoy the variety this brings to the world. Be it the supernatural with vampires, trolls, an alien child with an angelic voice or the plethora of interesting characters existing in the same world.

Finally, I apologize for possibly using your expression in a different or even false context.
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Re: Eliverse?

Post by sauvin » Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:36 pm

metoo wrote:
Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:50 pm
Sasutaschi wrote:
Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:51 pm
What is your opinion on a shared universe? Do you look upon the novels as separate entities?
Yes, I do. Each novel and short story resides in its own universe, short of a couple of exceptions.
And I like it that way. No never-ending series of sequels and prequels and whatever other kinds of quels there might be.
What few I've read of Lindqvist's works says to me that what metoo says is true. I don't know that I much like this or not.

Much of Stephen King's early work happens in what I call the "Castle Rock Universe", which lent an kind of comfortable familiarity when reading a new story set within it. You didn't have to know one flipping thing about any of the other stores when reading one of them to get full value out of whatever you're reading at the moment, but occasionally a name or place or event from one of the other stories would be mentioned in passing that'd give the ardent King reader a kind of soft, warm glow. Most of these stories were set in towns (most of them fictional, I think) within the same two or three counties, and none were sequels, prequels, periquels or circumquels, except maybe vaguely "paralelloquels" (mind you, the words "periquel", "circumquel" and "paralelloquel" are words I just now invented and will probably forget five minutes from now). I tended to look at these stories as just being different perspectives into a fictional universe that mapped uncomfortably well onto a real universe.

A kind of soft, warm glow? Or maybe a hard, cold glimmer, heh, heh, heh.

I've read most of his recent work (which definitely differs from his early work qualitatively in ways I can't define or describe) and none of them are set in or reference either the Castle Rock Universe or the Dark Tower Universe in any way that I could remember. I don't remember that they even have anything to do with each other at all, except that they're written by the same author. They were all very enjoyable, but not in the same way.
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metoo
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Re: Eliverse?

Post by metoo » Wed Dec 11, 2019 6:09 am

Sasutaschi wrote:
Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:21 pm
What I meant to say was that I enjoy imagining that some events from his novels had occurred in a single universe (Eliverse). Yet they don't necessarily affect each other narratively and are not connected. Think of it akin to our history, just because something happened in the past, doesn't mean it will affect my life or that I will even know about it. Yet it still happened.
JAL has stated that he needs to put his stories into environments with which he is familiar, socially and geographically. Otherwise he wouldn't manage to make the stories credible, he says. Thus, the realistic elements of his various works are similar or even the same. This might be part of your experience of a single universe.

However, I don't think that the fantastic elements of his stories repeat or re-occur. There are no vampires in Harbour and no haunted seas in Handling the Undead.

Even the vampire short story What Kept You So Long, which reflects back at Let the Old Dreams Die and therefore by proxy at Let the Right One In, is nevertheless in a different universe than the earlier works. For instance, the vampire infection works differently, to suit the latter story. In LtROI an infected person succumbs to the infection within hours or at the most a couple of days, while for the main character in What Kept You So Long the process takes a year or more. To resolve this, I like to think that LtROI is part of the universe of What Kept You So Long, while the reverse isn't necessarily true. There's a one-way connection between them. The same is true for the relation between LtROI and The Village on the Hill - the former exists in the universe of the latter, bot not the other way around.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Siggdalos
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Re: Eliverse?

Post by Siggdalos » Sun Nov 01, 2020 9:20 pm

The Places trilogy (I Am Behind You, I Always Find You, I Am the Tiger) is worth bringing up here since they also reference LtROI, but in different ways. Minor spoilers for the latter two books: in I Always Find You, the fictional version of JAL that serves as the narrator says that LtROI and all of his other stories were inspired by the events described in IAFY. This fictional JAL is also indirectly mentioned at least once by another character in I Am the Tiger. However, in IAtT, the protagonist Tommy T also remembers reporting on the events of LtROI and What Kept You So Long? as real incidents:

"[...] När de naturliga förklaringarna inte dög måste man beakta de onaturliga. Det var inte första gången i [Tommy T:s] yrkesliv som han hade snuddat vid den här typen av fenomen.
I slutet av 1982 bodde han ihop med en kompis från gymnasiet som hade en lägenhet vid Islandstorget. Han hörde utropet på polisradion och var första journalist på plats i Blackeberg och det han själv kom att döpa till "Badhusmassakern". Blodspåren i taket, som om dådet verkligen utförts av någon som
flög. En vampyr, enligt vissas utsaga.
En mentalt fullt frisk kvinna som satte en påle i bröstet på en för henne okänd lastbilschaufför eftersom hon blivit tilldelad
uppgiften att dräpa denna vampyr. [...]"


My translation:
"[...] When the natural explanations weren't good enough, one had to consider the unnatural ones. It wasn't the first time in [Tommy T's] career that he had come near this type of phenomenon.
At the end of 1982 he was living together with a friend from high school who had an apartment near Islandstorget. He heard the exclamation on the police radio and was the first journalist to arrive in Blackeberg at what he himself came to dub "the Bathhouse Massacre". The blood trails in the ceiling, as if the deed had really been committed by someone who
flew. A vampire, according to some testimonies.
A mentally completely healthy woman who drove a stake through the chest of a to her unknown truck driver because she had been assigned the
task of slaying this vampire. [...]"

(I'm guessing the mention of late 1982 is a mistake on John's part since the book LtROI takes place in late 1981 and the film in early 1982.)

It's brought up again later in the book:
"[Tommy T] hade aldrig varit i direkt kontakt med något som kunde kallas övernaturligt. Det där i Blackeberg gick att konstruera en förklaring till. Blodet i taket kunde kommit dit si och så och barnen som vittnade om någon som flög var i chock och föga tillförlitliga. Den gången hade han dessutom bara ställts inför ett fait accompli som var över när han anlände. [...]"

"[Tommy T] had never been in direct contact with anything that could be called supernatural. It was possible to construct an explanation for that thing in Blackeberg. The blood in the ceiling could have gotten there so and so and the children who described someone who flew were in shock and hardly reliable. In addition, that time he had just been faced with a fait accompli which was over when he arrived. [...]"

If we assume both IAFY and IAtT to be equally true, it would mean that the Places universe is one where JAL wrote the work of fiction LtROI but where the events of the book also actually happened. I'm personally not sure what to make of this, since the Places trilogy otherwise fits pretty seamlessly together as one universe.

On another note, I like to think that Border and Come Unto Me are in a shared universe since they both revolve around JAL's takes on Swedish folkloric creatures.

Oh, and I guess it's customary on forums like this to say "Long time lurker, first time poster". :D
Last edited by Siggdalos on Sat Nov 14, 2020 11:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
De höll om varandra i tystnad. Oskar blundade och visste: detta var det största. Ljuset från lyktan i portvalvet trängde svagt in genom hans slutna ögonlock, la en hinna av rött för hans ögon. Det största.

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metoo
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Re: Eliverse?

Post by metoo » Mon Nov 02, 2020 3:56 pm

Interesting references you found.

I must have noticed those, too, but I don't remember doing so. After all, it was a few years since I read the last one of the trilogy...

However, note that these things are not necessarily reciprocal. While the events in LtROI and What Took You So Long are part of the Places universe, the other way around need not be true...
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Re: Eliverse?

Post by dongregg » Tue Nov 03, 2020 1:16 am

Hi Siggdalos! Glad to read that you have come in from the cold as a lurker. :)
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Siggdalos
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Re: Eliverse?

Post by Siggdalos » Tue Nov 03, 2020 1:56 pm

dongregg wrote:
Tue Nov 03, 2020 1:16 am
Hi Siggdalos! Glad to read that you have come in from the cold as a lurker. :)
Thanks! Been infected for a couple years now but only found this forum some months back. For the most part I haven't felt like I had anything to add to the discussions since the rest of you put things so eloquently already.
De höll om varandra i tystnad. Oskar blundade och visste: detta var det största. Ljuset från lyktan i portvalvet trängde svagt in genom hans slutna ögonlock, la en hinna av rött för hans ögon. Det största.

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Re: Eliverse?

Post by sauvin » Tue Nov 03, 2020 6:47 pm

Siggdalos wrote:
Tue Nov 03, 2020 1:56 pm
dongregg wrote:
Tue Nov 03, 2020 1:16 am
Hi Siggdalos! Glad to read that you have come in from the cold as a lurker. :)
Thanks! Been infected for a couple years now but only found this forum some months back. For the most part I haven't felt like I had anything to add to the discussions since the rest of you put things so eloquently already.
That doesn't really matter. The point is as much to share the experience with others as much as it is to analyse. Besides, never know when you'll come up with something we'd never considered before!

Besides, "eloquence" is often vastly overrated.
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