Låt De Gamla Drömmarna Dö (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
I read this because I want to know what happened to Eli and Oskar. The piece which gave a glimpse about their future life was a finely written love story. But, like most of the other short stories in this book, in addition to be surprised with the themes, I am pretty much intrigued by the so many questions about immortality. It's just there in each story, people who are slightly (or much) depressed, loneliness, kinda makes me feeling a little miserable afterwards that I have to listen to Arcade Fire's Afterlife or Submarine ost to make me feel better again (I should probably read other novels with a more grounded, realistic themes. I don't know. England during industrial time kind of books?). But yeah, it's a nice thing to know about how Eli and Oskar sort of ended up. Reviews of this book seem to be a list of different people's likes and dislikes of each story. One man's meat and all that. So, in that regard, stories that left me with a sense of, well, dissatisfaction when they finished were: Can't See It! it Doesn't Exist, To Hold You While The Music Plays, and Paper Walls.Reading the story Eternal/Love I couldn't escape from the knowledge that the author's own father had died from drowning. I think this may also be the case once I start his novel Harbour. Being a fan of the old film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, I liked Substitute, in a creeping paranoia way. In the title story, Let The Old Dreams Die, we revisit the characters of Oskar and his vampire friend Eli from Let The Right One In, albeit through the eyes of someone else's love story. Almost as extras. At the end we still don't find resolution, perhaps Lindqvist will one day return to these great creations for a third time.In a similar way, the final story The Final Processing returns to two characters from the novel Handling The Undead. Flora and her Grandmother, Elvy, return to bring that story to a fitting conclusion.I read this book purely for the connections to Lindqvist's two previous novels, and those two stories, along with Substitute, and Border-the author's favourite, were my favourites, so it was worth reading for those four alone.
What do You think about Låt De Gamla Drömmarna Dö (2011)?
A nice collection of short stories, some of which expand on earlier novels.
—Paraponzo
Some stories were better than others but enjoyed it overall.
—tami
Read the Let the Old Dreams Die story only.
—Vicant
