Lost Souls
by Poppy Z. Brite
by Margaret Smith
I’ve had apprehensions about this book for some time now, and many of them were admittedly based on superficial knowledge. First, I did not believe that “Poppy Z. Brite” was a real name, until I read the author’s note of thanks to her father, Mister Brite, in the preface. Second, the premise: sulky, young – looking blood suckers embark on a road trip to a bar in New Orleans.
To be fair, the vamps in this story do make some attempt to distinguish themselves from their decadent predecessors in That Other Novel. Namely, they drive around recklessly in a shitbox, swill whiskey and fall asleep with their tousled heads hanging out the windows. Our pouty, tersely sexual, blood – guzzling friends engage in a series of mishaps which read like an unhappy mishmash of The Lost Boys, Thelma and Louise, and My So – Called Life.
Lost Souls makes no attempt to rise above the vampire genre’s own murky swamp of clichés: vampires pick up hapless mortals in smoky underground bars; vampires mumble passages about blood and altars and roses; vampires skulk through the night, looking for new ways to screw up their lives. In addition to endowing each vampire with self – centered angst, Brite insists on dubbing them all with hokey names. Her immortal brat pack includes Ghost, Christian, and the most lost soul of them all, Nothing, the hapless half-breed who does enough moping to fill a lifetime of Nine Inch Nails albums.
Speaking of names, the entire book is replete with irksome name-dropping from start to finish. Brite is apparently chummy with respected bigwigs such as Harlan Ellison, and in her preface, she makes a point of letting the reader know that. A few pages into the novel, the reader learns that to qualify as a lost soul, you must read Sylvia Plath, Ray Bradbury, and William S. Burroughs. When not browsing through the aforementioned, you must lie on your bed and contemplate your prospective bisexuality to the strains of Bauhaus and The Cure.
Since the release of Lost Souls, Brite has written another novel, Drawing Blood. I think it’s about a ghost or something. I am not trying to be flip. I could not get past the third page. Given Brite’s status as the new darling of alterna – horror, there will no doubt be another novel along soon. Maybe it will be a werewolf novel. And maybe it will be called Full Moon.
