SUCKERS. - Softcover

Billson, Anne.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330328069 ISBN 13: 9780330328067

Publisher: ATHENEUM. NY 1993, 1993

Synopsis

'Everywhere you looked, there would be women dressed in black - white faces, black hair, mouths painted scarlet. It was The Look. You saw it on the street. You saw it on the covers of magazines. You saw it presenting arts programmes on TV. And some of us saw it in our nightmares...' Anne Billson's debut novel, described by Christopher Fowler in Time Out as 'dark, sharp, chic and very funny', is set at the end of the 'greed is good' era, and features a gothic love triangle between a man, a woman and the 300-year-old vampire they chopped into pieces a decade earlier. But now she's back, and this time she's building a bloodsucking empire... 'Billson honours the rules of the genre, then proceeds to have fun with them... Dark, sharp, chic and very funny' (Christopher Fowler - Time Out) 'A superb satirist' (Salman Rushdie) 'Merits a post position on everybody's reading list, even those who don't usually like vampire stories. It isn't splatter fiction; it's an honest piece of literature' (Michael Wood - London Review of Books) 'Enchanting and ominous at the same time: a rare and impressive piece of literary juggling' (Jonathan Carroll) 'A distinctive, original and refreshing debut' (Kim Newman - Starburst) 'A black and bloody celebration of wit, womanhood and slapstick, beautifully sustained to a thoroughly satisfying climax' (Chris Gilmore - Interzone)

About this title

About the Author

Anne Billson is a film critic, novelist and photographer whose work has been widely published. Her books include the satirical horror novels Suckers, Stiff Lips and The Ex, as well as studies of John Carpenter's The Thing and Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In. In 1993 she was named one of Granta's 'Best Young British Novelists' and selected as one of the writers in W.H. Smith's 'Fresh Talent' promotion. She has lived in London, Cambridge, Tokyo, Paris and Croydon, and now lives in Brussels.

From Kirkus Reviews

Sassy entry in the horror game--in a first novel from young British author Billson. As in Kim Newman's brilliant Anno-Dracula (p. 884), set in Victoria's England, the vampires here take over British society, this time basing themselves in today's ultraclassy fashion magazines. Dora Vale is a ``creative consultant'' for the slicks who makes up her own research when suggesting bright new avenues in publishing. Ten years ago, in the days of flared jeans, she and her sometime boyfriend, photographer Duncan Fender, dismembered the 300-year-old international vampiress Violet, who seemed to be pursuing him and ``died'' singing the Drinking Song from La Traviata as Duncan and Dora disjointed her. Now, Violet returns as Rose Murasaki (``purple'' in Japanese), the editor of Bellini, and is making vampirism fashionable with swank layouts in her glossy pages. Bellini is published from the Multiglom building, the nexus of a new conglomerate taking vampirism worldwide. Duncan, meanwhile, marries Lulu, a busty dimwit--but Rose's interest in Duncan has not faded, and she tries to get to him by hiring Lulu as a model for her vamp layouts and then ``turning'' her. Duncan and Dora, alas, must disjoint Lulu. Author Billson's vampirism follows that of Bram Stoker and Christopher Lee movies and has little of the intensely imagined lore of Newman; hers is a social satire- -there is this, for instance, as Dora sits in a vampire pub: ``As I listened to their talk about accounts and magazines and salaries and mortgages I couldn't help but be disappointed. Being undead didn't seem to make much difference--they were still talking about the same tired old topics.'' Why is Rose so taken with Duncan? Will she turn him? Will all of London go ``undead''? Fast and fun as Dora and Duncan turn vampire hunters. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: ATHENEUM. NY 1993
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0330328069
• ISBN 13: 9780330328067
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320