by Whitley Strieber ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2001
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
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More by Jeffrey J. Kripal
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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