Christopher Moore - Bloodsucking Fiends
I have my ex to thank for introducing me to Christopher Moore, by way of another book of his, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. That book was quite good, but let’s be honest — a comedic book about Christ is a bit like shooting Jesus fish in a barrel. It’s not exactly a challenge to find decent material.
I suppose vampires are a pretty well-worn area as well, though it’s interesting to note that Bloodsucking Fiends was published a couple of years before Buffy and Angel made very effective light of the subject. What’s also interesting, along similar lines, is a scene in a “vampire support group” (from which the book’s title is derived), where a couple of degenerates are depicted as support group-hopping for a cheap thrill and the possibility of a date. Whether Chuck Palahniuk appropriated this idea for Fight Club, or the opposite, or if it’s just a big coincidence is unclear. It almost reads as a winking reference at this point, so it doesn’t really matter.
This is a fun, light read — not a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, but Moore really has a way of getting you interested in his characters. And it is from their oddities that the more subtle comedy shines through. Over Bloodsucking Fiends’ 300 pages, we follow the adventures of would-be author and San Francisco neophyte C. Thomas Flood, who works the graveyard shift at Safeway with a Dirty Dozen-style bunch of misfits called The Animals. Tom hooks up with Jody, a recently converted vampire with relationship issues. Oh, and the Emperor of the United States also plays a fairly large role.
It ain’t deep and it ain’t laugh-a-minute, but it’s still some of the most entertaining reading I’ve done in quite awhile. I’ll certainly be chasing down Moore’s other works, and I eagerly await this book’s sequel, which is due early next year.