| Page Contents | ||
|---|---|---|
| For the Blood is the Life | F Marion Campbell | 1911 |
This short story feels like a novella, the characters and narrative are so strong that they transcend the normal limitations of the form. F Marion Campbell is a man, by the way.
"... the inexplicable part of the matter is that it makes no difference whether the moon is rising or setting, or waxing or waning. If there's any moonlight at all, from east or west or overhead, so long as it strikes on the grave you can see the outline of the body on top."
| The Vampire Tapestry | Suzy McKee Charnas | 1980 |
This thoughtful novel gets brought out in different editions, so the public and the publishers think so too. In some ways dated, yet there's an intriguing, redemptive, empathic core.
Dr Weyland coughed, hesitated, sipped water. "The corporeal vampire, if he existed, would be by definition the greatest of all predators. ... The vampire's slowed body functions during these long rest periods might help extend his lifetime; so might living for long periods, waking or sleeping, on the edge of starvation."
| Vampyrrhic | Simon Clark | 1998 |
Hotels in real life are boring but hotels in fiction inevitably evoke latent sleaze. In "Vampyrric", a few weird characters meet in a quiet hotel, in the dark.
"After work tonight, I'm going back to the hotel and I'm going to go down into the basement and see what's really there."
| The Vampyre | Tom Holland | 1995 |
Lord Byron, character model for the first vampire story (see John Polidori), appears again in vampire fiction in this gothic account of his travels in Greece and Turkey.
The dark curls of his hair set off the ethereal paleness of his skin; so delicate were his features that they seemed chiselled from ice; no flush of colour, no hint of warmth touched the alabaster of his skin, yet the face seemed flushed by some inner touch of flame.
| The Historian | Elizabeth Kostova | 2005 |
Recognising its literary overtones, this long novel lives on the literary shelves in the bookshops. Beguilingly set, for a book reader, in the world of academia and libraries, initial admiration later gives way, in part, to the thought: too many words. If only books could be edited and re-published!
Looking up from my work, I suddenly realised that someone had left a book whose spine I had never seen among my own textbooks, which sat on a shelf above my desk. The spine of this new book showed an elegant little dragon, pale on green leather.
| Carmilla | Sheridan Le Fanu | 1872 |
A short story in the inert, nineteenth century style, for your later delectation, to round off your reading. Erotic in its day. What powerful imaginations they had, you'll realise when you read it and don't get excited.
She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed.
| Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur De Feu | Tanith Lee | 1984 |
Tanith Lee, doyen of gothic fiction, flirted many times with the vampire, though nowhere else as charmingly as in this fairy tale, a short story.
In the tradition of young girls and windows, the young girl looks out of this one. ... Already she has long dark beautiful eyes, a long white neck.
| Let the Right One In | John Ajvide Lindqvist | 2004 |
Translated from Swedish. Translations are reliable: any translation into English will have something going for it, otherwise why would the translator and publisher bother? This long novel is social realism or surrealism - depending on your life's experiences - masquerading as a vampire novel. While reading, ask yourself: without the vampire theme, would there be a story?
She was almost as tall as he was, but much thinner. The pink sweater fit tight across her chest, which was still completely flat without a hint of breasts. Her eyes were black, enormous in her pale little face. She held one hand up in the air in front of him as if she were warding something off that was coming towards her. Her fingers were long and slender as twigs.
"I can't be friends with you. Just so you know."
| The Night Watch | Sergei Lukyanenko | 2004 |
Translated from Russian. Deft handling of complex, supernatural material: you gasp at how many strands Lukyanenko keeps aloft and wonder: for how long? Alas, after a third of the book, the conjuring falters. But that third - called "Destiny" - is so magic, you feel like reading it again immediately.
I hope you - I started thinking, about the boss, but I caught myself just in time. He was quite capable of sensing even a half-formed thought.
| I Am Legend | Richard Matheson | 1954 |
This peculiar novel is written in a style so crisp and brittle that you hear clattering and banging sounds.
Angrily he jerked a high-legged stool to the sink, got a knife, and sat down with an exhausted grunt.
| The Vampyre | John Polidori | 1819 |
This is the first vampire fiction, but you wouldn't read it first, because, for an obvious reason, it's written in the nineteenth century style: too much description, too little dialogue and even less action. At least it's just a short story. Up until 1819, the vampire was a village myth: a bloated, undead peasant. Polidori brought the vampire into the drawing room: a suave, undead aristocrat, based on Lord Byron, who fascinated and repelled the man.
His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention.
| Interview with the Vampire | Anne Rice | 1976 |
If you're a bit of an outsider, out in the cold, irremediable, and this weird, sympathetic tale seduces you, you'll be amazed when you encounter vampire fiction lists without it. Rice enraptured a cult readership with the series she cultivated from this, her first novel's, camp undercurrents, but "Interview", like a secret, is special.
The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached stone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant green eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull. But then the vampire smiled, and the smooth white substance of his face moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon.
| Dracula | Bram Stoker | 1897 |
The only book that's never omitted from lists of vampire fiction, and the book that characters in other vampire books read. Towering and always in print, it wrapped up the past and cast a shadow over the future (except that vampires don't cast shadows).
Within, stood a tall old man, clean-shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot.
...
The fair girl went on her knees, and bent over me, fairly gloating. ... I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited.
© Stephen Balmer