Suckers

by Anne Billson

Overview

Anne Billson's debut novel is part horror story, part satire and has been praised by (among others) Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Carroll and Christopher Fowler, who in Time Out called it "dark, sharp, chic and very funny". It's set at the end of the "greed is good" decade, and features a gothic love triangle between a man, a woman and the 300-year-old vampire they chopped into easily disposable pieces a decade earlier. But now she's back. and this time she's building an empire...

Kevin Jackson, author of Bite, a Vampire Handbook, wrote: "This debut novel by Anne Billson, a noted film critic and frequent contributor to the Guardian, was highly praised by Salman Rushdie and others as a sharp and witty satire on the greedy 1980s. And so it was, but that was only part of the story: it is also a gripping adventure yarn, a tale of the nemesis that may lie in store for us if we have ever committed a guilty act, and a delicious character study of an unconventional young woman whose weaknesses (envy, malice, jealousy) only make her all the more charming to the reader. It contains one of the most chilling moments in all vampire literature..."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940033093335
Publisher:	Anne Billson
Publication date:	03/04/2012
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	391 KB

About the Author

Anne Billson is a film critic, novelist, photographer, screenwriter, film festival programmer, style icon, wicked spinster, evil feminist, and international cat-sitter. She has lived in London, Cambridge, Tokyo, Paris and Croydon, and now lives in Antwerp. She likes frites, beer and chocolate.

Her books include horror novels Suckers, Stiff Lips, The Ex, The Coming Thing and The Half Man; Blood Pearl, Volume 1 of The Camillography; monographs on the films The Thing and Let the Right One In; Breast Man: A Conversation with Russ Meyer; Billson Film Database, a collection of more than 4000 film reviews; and Cats on Film, the definitive work of feline film scholarship.

In 1993 she was named by Granta as one of their Best Young British Novelists. In 2012 she wrote a segment for the portmanteau play The Halloween Sessions, performed in London's West End. In 2015 she was named by the British Film Institute as one of 25 Female Film Critics Worth Celebrating.

Editorial Reviews

Yet another would-be satire of London's media swarm, this debut novel--which inexplicably caused Billson to be named among Britain's best young novelists earlier this year--is a tediously arch farrago whose less-than-inspired central conceit quickly wears thin. Magazine consultant Dora Vale and her erstwhile lover Duncan Fender have a creepy feeling that the vampire, Violet Westron, whom they had chopped into small pieces 13 years before, has returned as head of a multinational media conglomerate with designs on world domination. Of course it's true, and soon Dora finds herself alone against evil forces. Related in glib journalese, Billson's trite observations on contemporary pop culture are never toothsome or original enough to animate her moribund plot. Since Dracula and his ilk have always served as quite self-conscious symbols of cultural anxiety, the end-of-the-millennium-psychosis-blues that Suckers aspires to remain obdurately flat. Nasty and tasteless without being particularly shocking, silly without being very funny, the novel is--sharpened stakes and fangs notwithstanding--pointless and suprisingly lacking in bite; Suckers stands in sore need of a transfusion. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This British first novel tells the story of a very modern, very hip vampire hunter: Dora Vale, a cynical creative consultant who has managed to maintain a hopeful friendship with the love of her life, Duncan, despite his marriage to air-brained model Lulu and his infatuation with a 300-year-old beauty called Violet. Thirteen years ago, Dora and Duncan drove a stake through Violet's heart, but now she has returned, with an entire vampire network behind her. Weary of persecution, the bloodsuckers have decided to make England ``a haven where they can live and hunt in safety . . . just a smoothly run economy and specialized catering facilities.'' Hard-boiled Dora smart-mouths her way through one dangerous confrontation after another as she tries to save England and rescue the unworthy Duncan from a seduction for which he seems all too eager. Deliciously skewering the art and business scenes as well as the yuppies who are the vampires' prime targets, this surprisingly down-to-earth supernatural romp is highly recommended.-- A.M.B. Amantia, Population Action International, Washington, D.C.

Library Journal