There are books for the serious literary reader, and then there are books for the person who values reading for pleasure over reading for enlightenment. Some people spend their entire lifetime reading nothing but books from one column or the other, never mixing, never broadening themselves. I find myself often pitying them, usually the literary types more than the pop culture types, simply because I mired myself in the world of horror fiction (a vast wasteland, according to many “serious” types, including an obnoxious WASP-wannabe I dated in college) at a very early age and never intended to find my way out.
In the last year, though, I have found myself in the midst of an amazing transformation. Not only am I reading books I might have previously blown off as “snobbish” or “intentionally difficult,” but I’m also reading for fun. Fun. Me, the vampire addict, the ghost story enthusiast, leave the beaten path of morbid and morose?
It seems now that I avoided the funny, laugh-out-loud books on purpose.
I devoured everything written by Max Barry that I could find this year and moved on to Paul Neilan before returning to the familiar books of my youth, books I’d been remembering fondly while simultaneously suspecting they hadn’t been that good. Somewhere along the way I stopped seeking out the humorous again, but when I found a copy of Christopher Moore’s You Suck: A Love Story in Borders the other day, I bought it. Remembering it was a sequel, I dug up its predecessor Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story out of my vast TBR pile (or, more accurately, piles, seeing as I have them stacked up everywhere there’s open space in my bedroom) and sat down to read it.
As it turns out, with some novels you don’t have to turn in your horror lover’s card to find humor. There are some that mix the two rather well, and Moore seems to have quite the knack for it. Murder and the supernatural make room for the bizarre and nonsensical as a young woman named Jody finds herself attacked for no reason and shoved under a Dumpster, her clothing stuffed with money. When she wakes, her hand, which has been sticking out from under the can, has been burnt by the sunlight and her sleazy wannabe stockbroker boyfriend doesn’t care about her ordeal. She can’t even get him to call the police, and throws a potted plant at his head before leaving the apartment they share.
On her own, the newly turned vampire realizes quickly that she needs a get, someone who will guard her vulnerable body and home during the daylight hours, but she also finds herself incredibly lonely. Being a serial monogamist, and missing the company of a live-in boyfriend, she picks up Tommy Flood, a 19-year-old “novelist” from Incontinence, Indiana, who has been in San Francisco for only a few days. From there, the two of them will encounter the homeless Emperor of San Francisco (and protector of Mexico), his two canine “soldiers,” a rowdy crew of grocery store night stockers, the taunting vampire who turned Jody and two exasperated policemen, plus an extended cast of weirdos and wannabes that pepper the story with amusing dialogue.
It’s a fast read for a three hundred-page novel. It felt, time wise, like a book half its size. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel, along with the rest of Moore’s body of work, which seems to be nearing a dozen at this point. A quick look at his Wikipedia page shows me that he’s labeled an “absurdist” author, which seems readily appropriate.
As soon as I’m done slogging through David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten, a book I’ve been picking up on and off over the course of about six months, I’ll be making a return to San Francisco’s vampiric night life in You Suck: A Love Story. I can’t wait.
4/5
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