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Teenage vampire>> Christopher Moore channels his sick sense of humour into the bloody good You Suck: A Love Story  If you’re here in Montreal, however, may I suggest loading that crackling Faux Fire DVD onto the giant plasma screen you bought your ex-boyfriend for Christmas, and snuggling up with You Suck. A pre-test of this idea (minus the giant plasma screen, unfortunately) reveals that Christopher Moore’s perverse sense of humour takes a little warming up to, but give it a chance and it’s habit-forming. Tommy is an angry 19-year-old and an aspiring writer transplanted from the Midwest to San Francisco (much like Moore himself.) As our story opens, Tommy has just discovered that his older vampire girlfriend, Jody, has recently killed him. This is bad for him, but worse for her, as the truth slowly starts to dawn that he won’t just be alive forever, he’ll be 19 forever. It’s also not such a great thing for the reader, who may soon start to feel like a third wheel on an early date between Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. As 16-year-old goth girl, Abby Normal, who will eventually become the couple’s minion, might put it: “ew.” Being undead, however, eventually grows on Tommy, just as Christopher Moore’s frenetically sick sense of humour grew on me. It’s not so bad. Tommy gets to sleep all day, not a raw deal for a 19-year-old. He’s been given super human strength, intensely heightened senses and a capacity to make endless and amazing “hot monkey love.” (Ya, I know–“ew.”) There are, however, significant obstacles for the blossoming nosferatii. The couple is being pursued by Jody’s first mentor, who is not 19 and has a lot more experience being predatory than either of them. But worse is the inner torment: the wicked munchies, a gnawing impossible hunger that cannot be satisfied with normal human food and is particularly difficult for Tommy. He’s been supporting himself working night shifts at the Safeway. When he casually nukes a burrito he discovers human food makes him violently ill. Only blood will do. Fortunately, Tommy is still reasonably humane and resourceful. He hits on the idea of using hypodermics to siphon blood from a homeless drunk, then mixing it with food. On occasion, he rents the drunk’s unnaturally obese cat for an evening of bloodlust. Eventually, however, Tommy gives in to his worst instincts. And so we find him ravishing Blue, a hooker inspired by the Blue Man Group, who has been taking advantage of Tommy’s co-workers. Seems there’s a lot of guys out there harbouring deeply hidden fantasies of hot Smurf love (uh... bl-ew?) If this sounds a bit like Buffy mixed with Arrested Development and a pinch of Bad Santa, then you’ve got the idea. Kind of. Christopher Moore isn’t a writer who calls up obvious comparisons. Critics compare him to Carl Hiaasen, and the relentlessly quick-paced caper feel has echoes of Hiaasen’s swamp coast schtick. But Moore is more to Hiaasen what Stephen Colbert is to Bill O’Reilly. Adjust your irony satellite just right and Moore is, quite often, hilarious. As the plot gains momentum, Tommy’s role diminishes, which is not a bad thing. Teenage boys have many redeeming qualities, but as vampires, frankly, they suck. And so we hear more and more from Abby Normal. No matter how hard Moore tries to buck the trend, if human civilization only gets one thing right in its short stay on the planet, it’s the realization that for some reason the work of dealing with the undead was made for teenage girls. YOU SUCK: A LOVE
STORY BY
CHRISTOPHER MOORE, WILLIAM MORROW, HC, 328PP, $27.95
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