You Suck: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore

By Breanne Boland February 22, 2007 Issue

You Suck is a novel about vampires.

And if you laughed at that, you might enjoy this book.

Christopher Moore, terminal smart-ass and author of A Dirty Job among other titles, has returned with a tale of newborn vampires, cutthroat hookers, aimless slackers, and the Emperor of San Francisco. So for Moore, business as usual.

The book begins with 19-year-old Tommy awakening as a vampire after being turned by his girlfriend Jody. Throughout the novel he explores his new abilities, both good — marathon sex! and bad — passing out the second the sun rises. While discovering things like turning into mist and running up walls, he also has to explain his new state to his old friends — a pack of vampire hunters he once led.

However, Tommy and Jody’s relative domestic bliss is spoiled by the legion of characters pursuing them — Jody’s 800-year-old sire, for one. Not to mention two San Francisco cops, one angry blue prostitute, a born-again grocery store manager, and the owner of the largest cat in the city. Moore seems to take pride in creating books and casts of characters that can’t be described in less than a paragraph. This book is no exception.

Another Moore trademark is sacrificing character development for plot and wackiness, something the enormous and coarsely sketched cast does not help. Tommy and Jody are the core of this book, and Moore creates a compelling couple. She’s thrilled at being a vampire, because she was so used to being a frightened woman in the mean city streets. She loves being predator now, instead of prey as she once was. Tommy doesn’t ease into it so well; life is fragile for a vampire. Sunlight is a threat, as are people, and they’re entirely vulnerable while unconscious, a period that lasts at least half of a normal day.

It sounds like a unique take on irreconcilable differences within a relationship, no? Unfortunately, Moore barely gives lip service to these conflicts, instead focusing on brooding teenagers, pot-smoking grocery store employees, and other walking miscellany. Tommy and Jody only come together when they need to exchange information to shove the plot along.

The other problem is Moore seems unwilling to explore the darkness that seems to come with so many of his plots. As in A Dirty Job, he skates desperately around death and other necessary ugliness. Despite his main characters being creatures of the night, supernatural beings that drink the blood of the living, this book has an absurdly low body count. Even the vampires are squeamish about killing people. It’s good when books make their own mythologies about creatures like vampires and zombies; however, it seems an undeniable error in logic to make vampires riddled with moral quandaries. Vampires with problems? Yes, please. Vampires who just can’t bear to bite anything, let alone a human being? How on earth would they have survived all these millennia?

Stranger still is that his holding back doesn’t make his characters any more likable. There’s no reason to keep vampires from their normal routine except for the author’s desire not to sully his characters with something so unseemly. Instead of making them more appealing, it only makes them seem inept and wishy-washy. Generally, books about vampires aren’t supposed to be stories you relate to. However, with this one, I wanted to be a vampire just because I knew I could do it better.

Fortunately, mired in all this vampire confusion is Abby Normal, 16-year-old Goth girl and would-be Renfield to the blood-sucking pair. Her journal entries break up the narration, and while she abuses the slang a little too freely (lest Moore let us forget that she’s totally a teenager, no, like, seriously), her evolving view of immortality is incredulous and funny. It’s also a welcome respite from the narration, which is frequently belabored and often abuses similes. If you ever wondered how a bong is like an asthmatic scuba diver, check out page 203. The rest of the book is spotted with equally unlikely and distracting comparisons.

That aside, it’s a pleasant enough little book if you look past the wasted potential and if you really really like vampires. It’s also hardly denser than the average magazine, so it’s a quick read if you find yourself in need of something without a lot of depth. It’s also a sequel of sorts to Bloodsucking Fiends, Tommy and Jody’s first outing, which came out in 1995. Reading the first book isn’t necessary, as Moore catches us up on everything vital, plus some. The publishers must agree, as the cover bears no trace of a reference to the previous book.

There’s a burgeoning sub-genre of funny, irreverent vampire and zombie stories. Often, fantasy and horror can contain surprisingly real depictions of human emotions, bringing out new and interesting facets of traditional storylines. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of the finer entries in the sub-genre. You Suck’s title is just its attempt to strike before reviewers get the chance to.

You Suck, 328 pages, William Morrow. Available at bookstores, libraries, and online booksellers.

(Top)

More Book Reviews