Review: Book Reviews by Dorman T. Shindler
You Suck - A Love Story
By Christopher Moore (Morrow/328 pages/ $21.95)
Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler
Downplaying sexual imagery in dreams, Sigmund Freud supposedly said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Christopher Moore’s popularity arose out of the absurdist sensibilities in novels like Island of the Sequined Love Nuns, Lamb, and Fluke, wherein the author mixes Marx Brother’s-like silliness with satirical comments on society (commercialization, religion, environmentalism). But sometimes a silly story is just a silly: not every novel one picks up has to have deeper meaning. But if zany comedy (ala the Three Stooges or old screwball comedy movies of the 1930s and 40s) with a pinch of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sensibility is your cup of tea, then “You Suck,” modern-day love story about a boy and his vampire girlfriend — and sequel to Blood Sucking Fiends — is right up your alley.
When last we left them, aspiring writer Thomas C. Flood and Jody (his vampire girlfriend), were trying to locate the fiend who turned her into a bloodsucker. And when Jody was lured by the old vampire’s sensual wiles, Tommy ended up sealing his sexy, fang-toothed lover in bronze until he could figure out how to set things right. Unfortunately, the 19-year-old doofus also drilled “air holes” so she could hear him lamenting her entrapment (and know he still loved her). Like all vampires, Jody can transmogrify, so as You Suck begins, she turns to mist, escapes and bites her lovin’ baby on the neck.
Now Thomas has to find a way to cure himself and Jody. He also needs to once and for all take care of Elijah, the creep that turned Jody into one of the undead. But Thomas and Jody are now being stalked by a group of convenience store workers (with whom Tommy once hung out) that hunt vampires in their spare time, as well as professional vampire hunter from Las Vegas named Blue. So Tommy decides to get some help in his efforts to keep Jody and himself from being staked through the heart: he enlists his own version of Renfield, a Goth California girl named Abby Normal (even Moore can take the silly thing too far sometimes). But Tommy’s real concern is over how to make a relationship work when you’re on the run and needing to drink blood to stay alive.
It’s not entirely fair to say Moore’s vampire books (both of which are “love” stories) are without any redeeming satiric value. The author does take some hilarious (if sophomoric) jabs at the growing subgenre of vampire/horror fiction — a perfect target since many of the books and authors take themselves too seriously. One chapter (less than a page in length) is titled, “The Last Poop.” And in this passage, Moore pokes fun at the granddaddy of them all, Dracula:
“Could he really deal with three luscious vampire brides? Would he have to bring them a kid in a sack the way Dracula does in the book? How many kids a week would it take to keep them happy? And where did you get kid sacks?”
You Suck is the literary equivalent of Scream films: not high art, but not bad when looking for a bit of fun, light entertainment.
Skylight Confessions
By Alice Hoffman (Little, Brown/256 pages/ $24.99)
Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler
Like Washington Irving and the other New England Fabulists with whom she identifies, Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic, The River King, The Ice Queen) writes fiction cloaked in myths. Her influences also extend to the other side of the Atlantic, and can be found in the writing of The Brothers Grimm or Emily Bronte. It was Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” which inspired a 20th Century interpretation by Hoffman (“Here On Earth”). So the fairytale references which permeate Hoffman’s lilting, romantic prose in “Skylight Confessions” come as no surprise.
Like many Hoffman creations before her, seventeen-year-old Arlyn Singer is a young woman who believes in fate and true love. And when her father dies — leaving an only child who is “just plain and freckly” and minimally educated on her own — Arlyn decides that the first man who walks down her street will be the one whom she loves forever. As is the case with most fairy tales, the man’s name is a reflection of his soul (Hoffman’s novels are nothing if not fairy tales that address worries of adults, whether the concerns are about love or family or death). The young couple marry and move into a house built by John’s late father, who was an architect. The house is made of largely of glass, and is dubbed “the Glass Slipper.” Of course the couple’s relationship proves to be a rocky one, involving heartache and misery. Their son, Sam, is an antisocial boy with a near-genius IQ; but John ignores him, taking out his unhappiness with Arlyn on Sam. It isn’t long before the mismatched couple turn to others for the love and understanding they crave. Arlie’s affair with a window washer even results in a child — a girl named Blanca — whom John never realizes isn’t his (John is too oblivious, wrapped up in his own misery).
When Arlie contracts cancer, her children are left to grow up with their dad while living in the glass slipper. John, of course, gets remarried to Cynthia, the woman he really loves. They have a child together, a daughter named Lisa. And Arlie’s children grow hateful, developing problems (drug addiction, social withdrawal) of their own. Arlies ghost oversees it all, occasionally appearing to John and eventually leading a young woman to her old home in order to help heal the families wounds.
A glass slipper, a mean step mother, a family living in a shoe — Hoffman whips out all sorts of fairy-tale tropes in Skylight Confessions — what’s more, she puts them to good use. Her characters — even those with last names like Moody — have plenty of depth and complexity, and the underlying theme of how love, destiny and genetics have powerful holds on our lives rings true. Yes, Hoffman pushes emotional buttons — just as the fairy-tales she’s so fond of often do; but she manages to put such an original spin on these timeless tropes, that she comes off as one of the premiere fantasists of her generation.
Hart & Boot & Other Stories
By Tim Pratt (Night Shade Books/209 pages/$14.95)
Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler
One doesn’t a lowly reviewer such as yours truly to point out that Michael Chabon made a fine choice in selecting the title story of this sophomore short story collection by up and comer Tim Pratt for The Best American Short Stories 2005. Anyone who read his first novel, The Strange Adventures of Ranger Girl, knows Pratt’s got it goin’ on: weirdness, idiosyncratic characters, good plot. All of that and more is working overtime for Pratt in Hart & Boot and Other Stories.
If there’s an over-riding theme in this collection, it would be love: sometimes it’s love for a friend, sometimes it’s unrequited love, sometimes it’s the rare, white-hot passion one is lucky to run across once or twice in a lifetime, and sometimes it’s a love for life. Since it takes on the old West, “Hart & Boot,” the title story of this collection, is fittingly spare in style and structure. Using the real life lady bandit Pearl Hart and a mysterious partner she teamed up with for a short time as his starting place, Pratt sets about the task of creating a fictional biography. In this case, Pearl has managed to create John (or Joe) Boot out of whole cloth, via the power of her imagination and the longing and desire for a good man, the sort of lover who knows what’s most important. Pratt is savvy enough not to turn the story into a “happily ever-after” type tale, leaving off with an appropriately mysterious and satisfying, but open-ended, denouement.
Like the client for whom he currently works — an immortal whose “life” (which was hidden inside a stone) has been stolen — the assassin named Zealand in “Life In Stone” has grown bitter. But whether or not he’s grown bitter enough to give up on life is a question he must answer for himself during his hunt for the client’s soul in North America, a search that takes him to some fantastic homes and hideaways, such as the bottom of Lake Champlain or a secret spot behind Niagara Falls. Zealand’s body aches with pains and injuries earned throughout his career, and his payment for locating the client’s soul is the secret of immortality. But when he comes across the client’s daughter — all but forgotten, due to a sad side-effect of living so long — Zealand finds himself questioning his methods and his own inner madness.
Lying at the um, heart, of this collection of fantastic tales is “Romanticore,” a story of a fiery passionate love that must, of needs, be short-lived. The protagonist, Ray, a writer, is a man living in an open relationship. This reflects his beliefs about the nature of man-woman relations in general: that they shouldn’t be physically constricting, as long as both parties are honest about their dalliances. Then he’s jilted by his lover after she falls in love with his best friend, whom she has been seeing on the sly. Beating his chest, howling at the sky, and generally feeling sorry for himself (as we all do), said protagonist stumbles into Lily, a hot, artsy-fartsy musician whose open relationship with Martin (also a musician) allows her to dabble while he is touring. They have five months together. Of course, that isn’t enough for Ray. For him, Lilly is the end-all and be-all: a goddess in more ways than one. His obsession and the strange-goings on in the relationship between Martin and Lily make for a truly killer ending. For my money, it’s one of the better fantasies about the search for love, right up there with Harlan Ellison’s “Grail.”
“Lachrymose and the Golden Egg,” is a romantic comedy with plenty of pathos in which reality and fantasy start to change places via the magic of modern medicine and desire; and “Living with the Harpy” is a bittersweet tale of true love realized, but at a cost. There are eight other stories in this excellent collection by Pratt, and every one of them is a solid piece of work. Whether he is reinventing old myths or creating new ones, Pratt is a formidable writer, one whose books deserve a place on everyone’s bookshelves.
Heart Shaped Box
By Joe Hill (Morrow/384 pages/ $24.95)
Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler
Genre fans familiar with the best in the field already of horror and dark fantasy know the name Joe Hill, because it is attached to some of the better short stories published in the recent past. World Fantasy, British Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards have been handed out to Hill for stories like “Voluntary Committal” and “Best New Horror.” Hill’s first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, is an unsettling ghost story that takes what could be a laughable premise and adds so many twists, turns and out-right shocks that readers will be white-knuckling their armchairs by novel’s end.
A self-indulgent, self-important member of the Baby Boomer generation, Judas Coyne is a middle-aged survivor of rock stardom, who still makes money off his past fame (think of Ozzy Ozbourne and his reality-based TV show and you’ll be in the ballpark). He’s also an insatiable collector of morbid artifacts: a painting by serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Aliester Crowley’s chessboard, the 300-year-old signed confession of a witch, and so on. And when Jude’s assistant, Danny, runs across a ghost for sale, he can’t help himself – he has to buy it.
“It” is an old suit that the seller says is haunted. At first, Jude believes he’s participating in a lark. But on the first night after the suit arrives at his house, Jude sees the ghost of an old man swinging a pendulum-like blade while sitting in chair. Not long after, his lover, Georgia, sees the ghost as well. Although strange but harmless things start happening around their house, it doesn’t take long for Jude and Georgia to become certain that the old man’s ghost means to do them harm. Especially when they discover that the accidental discovery of the internet ghost was actually a setup: a woman seeking revenge (for a sister who committed suicide over the aging rocker) made sure Judas would fall for the bait and buy the ghost of one Craddock McDermott.
Suffice it to say that the truth is even more complicated. At that point, the book moves from the tale of an unsettling, eerie haunting to suspense-filled thriller as Jude and Georgia take it on the road in order to solve the mystery and set things right. But even then, the weird supernatural element prevails, as in this passage from chapter twenty-one: “The daylight began to fail when they were just north of Fredericksburg, and that was when Jude saw the dead man’s pickup behind them…”
This debut novel is a fine mix of psychological terror and gruesome horror. Influences from a diverse array of writers — Edgar Allen Poe, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman and even Hill’s paterfamilias — are apparent while reading this heart-stopping horror novel. But in the end, it is Joe Hill’s own writerly strengths and voice that shine through; Hill’s undeniably singular talent is unmistakable. As for Heart-Shaped Box, it’s the perfect Valentine for the fan of good horror fiction in anyone’s circle of friends, family or lovers.