Love at First Bite

I finished reading Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore today. As always with Moore's books, it was wickedly and delightfully inappropriate, not quite up to the level of impropriety in Fool, or even in Lamb but I credit that to the fact that he seems to rise to greater levels of lewdness when he is dealing with topics that people typically revere, such as rewrites of Shakespeare's King Lear and recounting Christ's childhood and adolescence.

Moore is not for the faint of heart, just to warn you, regardless of which books you read. He thinks nothing of inventing foul language if that already in existence doesn't suffice. Yet, in spite of what some may call "lowbrow" comedy, Moore writes with class and eloquence, and, amid the comedy, delves into topics that get right at the center of the human question.

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story addresses the topics of alienation, loneliness, individuality, and death. There are probably more, but that's what I can think of right now. The plot, briefly, and without giving away anything you won't find on the back cover, begins when Jody, a woman dissatisfied with her job, and her penchant for going from one jerk to another, is attacked and wakes to find that she is a vampire. Quickly realizing that she can't manage her predicament alone, she looks for a man to help her and finds Tommy Flood, a Beat-obsessed wanna-be writer who calls himself C. Thomas Flood and dreams of being Fitzgerald and finding his Zelda in the City.

Jody's predicament first makes her lonely, then empowers her as she learns how to be a vampire.

Of course, the vampire that changed her did it for a reason, and adds complication to the plot.

I won't say more; I don't want to spoil the book for anyone who might read it.

Soon, I'll start blogging about my reading for school, which will consist of 18th Century British lit, such as Jonathan Swift and Henry Fielding; Marxist Literary Theory, material relating to medieval women, and, last but not least, my students' papers. :)

So, I guess what I'm saying is, the blog for the next few months may not be interesting to anyone other than myself. Hang in there. I'll get back to Christopher Moore again, with the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, eloquently entitled, You Suck.