Bloodkisses suprême. A deliriously meaty cultural anthropology, sickening and delicious. Guzzle a real drink, Anne Rice....
Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1976) or Anne Rice’s whole sick crew were the last word in vampirism? Not so. Strieber’s The Hunger (1981) carried the cultural anthropology of vampires to a shrewd new level by accenting the medical readout on the undead.
Now Strieber’s back, and his new big sheaf of medical charts looks bad for Stoker’s children. The CIA is sweeping the planet clean and out to kill The Last Vampire in this flowing, sexy, intellectually rousing sequel to The Hunger, gorgeously filmed in 1983 with Catherine Deneuve as 3000-year-old Miriam Blaylock, who showed Miriam losing victim/lover John to sudden aging and then turning gerontologist Sarah Roberts into her lesbian lover. Together now, the two women run a veiled and exquisitely gross club for fallen souls in Manhattan. Attending an Asian vampire conclave held once a century in the Thai city of Chiang Mai, Miriam finds the enclave wiped out and the revered Book of Names, which holds the histories of all vampires ever, eaten to bits by roaches. Are other enclaves now meeting secretly around the world also compromised? Master vampire killer Paul Ward, a woman-worshipping, opium-loving CIA agent on special vampire-slaying duty, his self-amused big mouth as lowbrow as Tony Soprano’s, just loves to bust bloodsucker skulls with his .375 Magnum. Years ago a vampire killed his father. Now the CIA has cracked the Book of Names code and learned that Miriam is the last vampire capable of reproducing a true vampire. But with whom can she mate? Even though Miriam likes sex with succulent humans, cross-species mating won’t take. And she’s not much to look at when Ward—who moves superhumanly—tracks her down in Paris, where she’s survived a severe burning but is now bald and scorched. Nonetheless, at their first face-to-face meeting, her egg thrills for his sperm. When at last they bed down in Miriam’s Manhattan club, it’s Tony and Cleo lusting in Egypt, demon lovers, their tiger tongues locked.
Bloodkisses suprême. A deliriously meaty cultural anthropology, sickening and delicious. Guzzle a real drink, Anne Rice. Calling Catherine Deneuve!Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-1720-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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