You Suck: A Love Story

It’s likely been over a decade since I last read You Suck (definitely pre- managing my Goodreads account), and I had completely forgotten how absolutely ridiculous Christopher Moore’s second romp through vampire lore is. Continuing the tale of two starcrossed lovers turned recently into vampires by an ancient in search of entertainment and companionship, Moore does his best to string together one hilarious highjinx after another until we finally close the pages on the story, wondering what exactly it was that we have read but sure that we’ve been entertained throughout. While technically the story does make sense narratively, Moore is all over the place in terms of action, with multiple groups of characters coming in and out of show more each other’s spheres of influence, and the book is a veritable whirlwind of randomness. Everything that can go wrong does (newly made vampires are a perfect recipe for drama), and we have to just settle in and accept the random if we’re going to make it out the other side. He does do a decent job of playing with the traditional vampire lore as well, while juxtaposing it against the challenges of being a modern human and having very little idea of what it takes to be a member of the undead, which earns him a decent (if arbitrary and unserious) place in the rankings of vampire stories throughout the ages. Could we have maybe had a little less problematic chauvinistic themes? Definitely. But Moore was writing at a time when the rude boy aesthetic was popular and largely accepted amongst the reading populace and publishers - and his characters are so overblown and ridiculous that we can hope that his point was meant to be sarcastic and at least a little bit critical of idiot male behaviour. All in all, a fun vampiric romp through San Francisco. show less

Following on Moore's hilariously warped Bloodsucking Fiends, this novel takes up where that one ends. Opening with Tommy chastizing (probably too polite a term, incidentally) his girlfriend, Jody, for turning him into one of the undead himself, this is really a long and twisted look at Tommy and Jody's evolving relationship and the mundane details of life as vampires. For instance, it is incredibly important, when a vampire, to have a minion to whom you can delegate your daylight hours tasks. In Tommy and Jody's case, now that Tommy is himself a vampire, they recruit the cheerful and therefore inauthentic goth girl, Abby Normal. She is to do their bidding and protect them from the vampire hunting Animals, former Safeway night stockers show more and pot heads with whom Tommy used to work. Many of the characters from the first book make appearances in this one with the addition of some completely new kooky folks. There's Blue, the money hungry and completely sadistic prostitute who has dyed herself entirely blue. There's a homeless alcoholic with a fat cat who provides a reasonably stable blood source for Tommy and Jody as long as they keep him supplied with alcohol (nevermind that his blood makes them beyond tipsy). There are more twists than in a bag of pretzels as the vampire population in the Bay area explodes with unintended consequences and a completely original resolution.

In true Moore fashion, there are giggles and nuttiness and entertainment galore in the pages of this one. I will say that I didn't love You Suck as much as I did Bloodsucking Fiends, but I have high hopes for the third (Bite Me) as not only was the end of this one left gapingly wide open but it was also a bit rushed. I was slow to warm up to Abby Normal herself and found her early journal entries ridiculous and overwrought but as the novel progressed, I realized that they were written this way intentionally and that her fawning over the whole concept of vampirism making way for cool appraisal and steely nerves was itself a major plot development. In the end, I enjoyed the book and will be curious to see where the madcap vampire series careens next. Moore has a very warped sense of humor and he's not for everyone but I think he's a kick. More discerning and sensitive folks will want to know about the profanity, graphic vampire sex, and complete crassness that dots the pages of the book. But if this sort of thing doesn't bother you, you're in for a ride. show less

For Halloween this year, I went as a bad standup-comedian vampire. I wrote some jokes that followed typical standup subject matter but entirely without punch lines. My style was Steven Wright minus the payoff. I dressed as a vampire, wore realistic fangs, too, and performed the routine at two parties with a plant in the audience each time directed to shout, after four jokes, “You suck!!!”

I killed.

Hahahah. Well, I kill me, anyway.

So a while back a friend loaned me the novel, You Suck because he said it was hilarious. When I realized it was part two of a trilogy, the OCD completist in me couldn’t read it without buying part one Bloodsucking Fiends and part three Bite Me. This review will cover all three installments.

All three books show more have a delightfully whimsical, campy quality. Occasionally, there are moments of pseudo-profound introspection, but these are some of the least satisfying elements in the books. The Vampire Trilogy, as Moore calls it, at its finest puts a few hilarious characters in embarrassing situations. And he’s got some brilliant lines sprinkled throughout to season the meal.

Bloodsucking Fiends is by far the least funny and least satisfying of the three. I would describe it as fun without being all that funny. There were several plot twists, especially toward the end, that were quite unconvincing. I also found one of the two main characters, the 19-year old writer wannabe, to be rather annoying and far too naïve-country-boy-comes-to-big-city while the other main character was a bit too bland. Nonetheless, Moore sustained my interest through a barreling plot and amusing characters. I was definitely a bit disappointed and almost didn’t continue, but the OCD side took control, and I’m glad it did.

You Suck upped the hilarity quotient exceedingly through the introduction of two characters of comedic brilliance, the sick-and-twisted, uber-snarky goth girl Abby Normal (I wonder if Moore stole that name from Young Frankenstein. Or more accurately, did the character steal it because her “real” name is Allison Green while Abigail von Normal is her goth name) and her gay goth bff Jared. Apparently, Abby has a small role in one of Moore’s other novels, but she becomes much more significant in You Suck, and Bite Me is really more of her novel than the two hero vampires, Tommy and Jody. Good call, I say. because she is way damn funnier and smarter than either of them. She really steals the show with her wit and attitude. I could read Abby Normal all day.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see these novels as movies some day. The late-shift supermarket stockers/vampire-hunting stoners featured practically beg for a screenplay to be written for them. And surely some starlet needs to be Abby Normal in order to break from her goody-two-shoes casting. And plus … vampires. Nobody’s done a good vampire comedy since Love at First … okay, since ever. This could work.

Occasionally, the plot seems to get away from Moore and it requires more exposition than it should, but when he focuses on character, the story kills. Overall, worth reading … good comedy is bloody hard to do. show less

Title: You Suck: A Love Story

Author: Christopher Moore

Hardback: 328 pages

Date Published: 2007

Publisher: HarperCollins

ISBN: 9780060590291

Miscellaneous: You Suck is a sequel to Moore’s book Bloodsucking Fiends.

It turned out that superhuman vampire strength came in handy when shaving a thirty-five-pound cat. After a couple of false starts, which had them chasing Chet the huge shaving-cream-covered cat around the loft, they discovered the value of duct tape as a grooming tool. Because of the tape, they weren’t able to shave his feet. When they were finished, Chet looked like a big-eyed, potbellied, protohuman in fur-lined, duct-tape space boots — the feline love child of Gollum and Dobby the house-elf.

I’m not sure we needed to shave show more all of him,” Tommy said, sitting on the bed next to Jody as they considered the bound and shaven Chet on the floor before them. “He looks creepy.”

“Pretty creepy,” Jody said. “You’d better drink. Your wounds aren’t healing.” All her scratches, bruises, and love bites were completely healed, and except for a fleck of shaving cream here and there in her hair, she was as good as new.

“How?” Tommy asked. “How do I know where to bite him?”

“Try the neck,” Jody said.

-You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore, pages 29-30

You Suck by Christopher Moore is a fun, light read about two young vampires in love who must face the difficult tasks of being UNDEAD in a day-slave world. They face the HUNGER and must feed, they must deal with vampire killers, they have to find an apartment, and… for the LOVE of ALL things UNholy! They have GOT to figure out a way to drink a cup of joe without the coffee making a forceful return trip to spooge on their shoes!

While, technically, this book is a sequel to Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends, it is more than capable of standing alone. The past events are mentioned in a very natural way, so that you don’t have that sense of being late to the party.

Some of the best qualities of You Suck is the unusual characters and the way they all mix together. Take Blue for instance: An aging Vegas hooker whose career-prolonging gimmick is that she’s painted blue from head to toe, inspiring the reoccurring line, “Didn’t you want to bone a smurf when you were a kid?” And then there’s Abby Normal (day slave name, Allison Green) who is the emo/goth/vamp-wannabe minion of Jody and Tommy, our romantic heroes. And one of my favorite characters of the book is William, the dirty, fat, drinking/stinking bum with the 35-pound cat. William makes his money sitting in high-pedestrian areas, holding a sign that says “I’m poor and I have a huge cat” and charging passersby to touch his huge cat.

Another quality of You Suck that I enjoyed is Moore’s sense of humor, his sarcasm and his ease-of-reading writing style. He doesn’t take himself too serious as a writer, and mixes up the story telling from omniscient 3rd person and “Diary of a Put Upon Goth (closet perkie) Girl,” the subjective point-of-view of Abby Normal, which provides the outsider-wanting-in view. And Abby’s journal entries are so funny, complete with self-abasement and bunny-trails and updates on her sister’s head lice problem.

You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore was my first experience with the author, but it won’t be my last In some ways, he reminds me of Janet Evanovich, who is one of my favorite “fun authors.” I give You Suck 4 out of 5 stars It’s a fun book you can sink your teeth into ^,…,^

click for the full review: http://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/you-suck-a-love-story-by-christoph... show less

Moore's been a favorite of mine ever since I discovered The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, but it took me a long time to get around to this one. For some reason, the first book in this series--Bloodsucking Fiends--didn't hit me in the same vein (okay, Moore got to me, I can't help punning...) as his others. This second in his vampiric series was no different. His irreverent, bizarre, hilariously strange characters and jokes and twists are as present in this book as others, but there's just an extra twist of non-PC dark that I don't enjoy so much as I do in his other books, despite the fact that I love horror.

So, in the end, this was a fun read, but probably not a book I'll come back to. It's certainly not the one I'd recommend for show more someone trying Moore for the first time--leave that to Lamb or A Dirty Job or the book I mentioned above, Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cover. Because while there's nothing particularly wrong with his vampire books, they just don't seem to have the same level of fun life that his others do, one way or another. show less

I’d suggest that you read Christopher Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends (also subtitled “A Love Story”) before cracking open - or pressing “play” on - You Suck. You can follow this novel - the middle installment in a trilogy - without it, because there is a fair amount of recapping, but it will probably make more sense if you’ve read the first book. That is, if a comic saga of modern vampire love in San Francisco is capable of making any sense at all.

Nineteen-year-old Midwesterner Tommy Flood’s efforts to keep his vampire girlfriend Jody Stroud safe by having her bronzed were rather undone by her escaping from her enclosure (in the form of mist) and turning him into her undead consort. Jody hasn’t been a vampire all that show more long herself, but she’s learned enough to show Tommy the ropes, which include finding food sources, never being caught out in the open at sunrise, and dodging Tommy’s former co-workers on the night crew at Safeway, a couple of homicide detectives, and the ancient vampire who originally turned Jody.

Christopher Moore is solidly ensconced on my “favorite authors” list, especially since I introduced my husband to his books, but it has taken me an embarrassingly long time to get around to reading You Suck - so long that I decided that I’d try listening to it instead. Having found that humor works in audio for me, I chose this as my first fiction audiobook (and first not read by the author), and I think I made a fine call. While I’ve been known to laugh out loud while reading Moore’s books in print, I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed as much as I did while listening to You Suck...and I’m not going to say that’s because it’s his funniest book (it might be, but I can’t really make that distinction). I think it’s that humor is enhanced by delivery, and it may be that sometimes it’s delivered more effectively in vocal and visual form than via words on a page. Narrator Susan Bennett does an excellent job with the voice characterizations here, particularly with Tommy, teenage perky-Goth-girl Abby Normal (who narrates portions of the story via her diary), and the homeless Emperor of San Francisco, and handles the narrative portions as the calm voice of reason, no matter how outlandish the situation gets - and with Christopher Moore, outlandish situations are a given. show less

I was not aware when I started You Suck that the book takes place chronologically after Bloodsucking Fiends, but as I was already fairly far into it at the time and having few to no problems following along, I thought continuing on to the end and picking up the first book afterwards would be perfectly fine. Given the light tone of the novel and Moore's effortless foregrounding of essential plot-points, I sailed through the entire narrative without much trouble at all.

While I own a few of Moore's novels -- Practical Demonkeeping, A Dirty Job, and belatedly, Bloodsucking Fiends -- You Suck is the first of these I've managed to get around to reading. I've heard much about his writing, including an enthusiastic and spontaneous endorsement show more by the cashier when I purchased this novel, and was therefore ready for a rollicking laugh-out-loud experience along the lines of those delivered by Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams.

Although You Suck is quite funny, I suffered a small amount of disappointment, especially in the early parts of the narrative, as the humour is more of a gentle bent, and while enjoyable, it lacks some of the bite or snap I was hoping for. It is an excellent subversion of the vampire genre, however, and just what I needed as antidote to much of the Twilight series (which I have been reading about rather than actually reading). It is a novel that plays with and gently mocks the vampire genre without forgetting its roots.

Surprisingly, rather than wearing out its welcome, I found that the humour in You Suck became much stronger as the narrative progressed, in no small part due to the introduction of Abby Normal, a character I would happily read about in isolation, and one whom I was excited to see appearing more and more as the story moved toward its conclusion. She was so wonderful, so funny, so absolutely captivating that I found myself reading large swathes of her point of view out to whomever would stay still long enough to listen. I cheered when I realized that Abby was one of the primary narrators from the halfway point on, and I really do hope that Moore brings her back in subsequent stories. It'd be a crying shame not to see a little more of her, her best friend, and her boyfriend; Abby's diary entries are where Moore's talent shines brightest.

The plotline itself is a fairly simple one, but Moore's characters are well-drawn, breathing in between the pages as he skillfully sketches out each one. I was intrigued by the various homeless characters, and how even in the grip of addiction and madness they have important roles to play. The main characters, Jody and Tommy, were wonderful studies in subverting vampiric expectations, especially as they continually ran up against the stereotypes that run rampant through the genre. Moore does not shortchange any of his characters; they are lovingly rendered, and it is impossible to come away from You Suck without feeling something for them.

Perhaps that's why, in the end, the conclusion to Jody and Tommy's story left me feeling unsatisfied. While Moore wraps up their love story logically, given the particular impasse in front of the two of them, I couldn't quite get on board with the idea that this was the only option open to them. Perhaps those final events say more about Abby's perception of Jody and Tommy than Jody and Tommy themselves (or their relationship). It certainly left me in a position where I wanted to see both of them again, perhaps in another novel that would resolve the rather unfortunate holding pattern they've been left in.

Finally, while I had no problems following the novel even as I was reading it out of order, especially as the plot began to wind up, I got the sense that there were at least a few small threads that I would have understood better and in more detail had I read Bloodsucking Fiends first. I plan to rectify that concern very shortly, and am hoping that it will give me more insight into some of the divergent and lightly-touched upon subplots in You Suck. Certainly, Moore's brand of humour is something I could get used to, and while this narrative was not as perfect as I expected given various testimonials, I am looking forward to working my way through a number of his other stories, my fingers tightly crossed that Abby will show up again in all her cheerfully Goth glory. show less