Sweet Nightmares (Poppy Z. Brite in General)

Member Name: delawney

Product:	Poppy Z. Brite in General
Date:	05/09/02 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful and disturbing

Disadvantages: Beautiful and disturbing

Poppy Z Brite is not for everyone. If reading about vampires, sex, homosexual sex, murder, cannibalism and getting into the mind and soul of serial killers is not for you, then nor is Poppy. However, she manages to take all her subject matter, however gruesome and somehow make it beautiful at the same time. This is thoroughly disturbing, and is perhaps the source of Poppy's horror.

I first discovered Poppy back when I was an impoverished student. A friend had written to me, and had included just one short line - "Have you read any Poppy Z Brite?". I hadn't, but I was intrugued - this is a friend whose opinions I respected. Fortunately for me, Penguin were celebrating their "anniversary" with the release of all those dinky little Penguin books for 60p, and one of them was a selection of 4 short stories by Ms Brite herself, under the heading "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood". Intrigued, I gave it a go. I was glad I did.

I was immediately enchanted by Poppy's style. Poppy's stories encapture the dark side of the world, the dark side of human nature, and the dark side of inhuman nature. "Wormwood" is typical of many of her stories. It is set in New Orleans, the characters have an unhealthy fascination with drinking illicit absinthe (hence the wormwood), they all like sex but have sexual hang ups of varying degrees. Her writing is always, always beautiful, no matter how horrific the scene she may be trying to capture. This in itself adds to the horror.

To appreciate Poppy's stories, it helps to have a bit of an understanding of Poppy herself. She believes she is a homosexual man trapped in a womans body. OK, this may make her as mad as a box of frogs, but it does explain some of her writing. The short "biography" at the front of most of her books gives us an insight into her unusual character. She has worked as a gourmet candymaker, a mouse caretaker, an art
ist's model and an exotic dancer. She enjoys the music of Tom Waits and is fascinated by numerous subcultures including goth and cyber. She lives in the French quarter of New Orleans with two cats and two boyfriends.

Poppy's first novel, "Lost Souls" is a tale of vampires. Poppy's vampires do not follow the traditional vampire myth. In the Poppyverse, vampires are another breed. You cannot be "turned" into a vampire - you either are one or you are not. The central character, Nothing, was brought up in suburban Maryland. He feels an outsider and suspects he is different from other teenagers. He runs away from home and hooks up with Zillah, Molochai and Twig - a group of pleasure seekers for whom "the party had been going on for centuries, fuelled by sexual frenzy, green Chartreuse and a cocktail of vodka and innocent blood". When Nothing gets his first taste of human blood, his suspicions he is different from other teenagers is confirmed.

Meanwhile, we meet Ghost, the visionary singer of the band "Lost Souls?". "When Nothing was drawn into Zillah's fatal circle, Ghost has to decide whether he should try to save the boy from himself - or abandon him to his bloody birthright." All this whilst he's bordering on a homosexual relationship with a fellow bandmember...

Her second novel, "Drawing Blood", takes a different twist. This time her story focuses on Trevor McGee, a young man who witnessed his father murder his mother and his brother before hanging himself, back when Trevor was just five years old. This is bound to result in someone with "issues"! Trevor hooks up with fugitive computer hacker Zach. Trevor is ready to face the demons, ready to risk his life again...

The four short stories that made up the little Penguin book "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" were taken from the short story collection &qu
ot;Sw

amp Foetus" (now republished under the new name "Wormwood: A Collection of Short Stories"). A collection of "twelve new tales of bizarre and seductive terror", according to the cover. Here Poppy explores a variety of themes - her beloved vampires, zombies and of course that thing that can be the most evil of all - human beings.

"Exquisite Corpse" was published in 1997 and is perhaps my least favourite Poppy book. Here, Poppy abandons her exploration of the supernatural and, "inspired" by Jeffrey Dahmer, concentrates instead on trying to get herself into the mind of two particularly gruesome serial killers, and wonders what would happen if they should meet... Set once again in New Orleans, we are catapulted into the dark worlds and minds of these two men, and the minds and souls of some of their victims. This is uncomfortable reading. It is a gripping story, but it is not a pleasant story. Poppy's books are horror stories, so you do not expect to find them too comfortable. However, I felt more comfortable not getting into the heads of the bad guys to this depth - there's something terribly creepy about it. Somehow perhaps it is more acceptable for Poppy to write about horrible things in a beautiful way when they are supernatural horrible things, but it is perhaps just a little too close to home when she does it about truly horrible things that can happen in real life.

Poppy's horror does not come simply from blood and gore. Her horror has real depth, because what she concentrates on is the characters enjoyment of that bllod and gore. This is perhaps why I enjoy the supernatural stories so much, but perhaps find it just a little to close to home when we are talking about human beings. Perhaps that's no bad thing!

Poppy explores the dark side of humanity, either writing about humans or using supernatural creatures like vampires as metaphor. She takes us where


we would not dare go alone and gives us a secret taste of badness - you almost feel you want to check and make sure no one's watching you read it!


Novels:
Lost Souls (1994) - RoC; ISBN: 0140173927
Drawing Blood (1994) - Penguin Books; ISBN: 0140238719
Exquisite Corpse (1997) - Phoenix mass market p/bk; ISBN: 185799437X

Short Story Collections:
Wormwood: A Collection of Short Stories (1996) - Dell Publishing Company; ISBN: 0440217989
Self Made Man (2000) - Orion mass market paperback fiction; ISBN: 0753810174

Edited:
Love in Vein : Twenty Original Tales of Vampiric Erotica (1995) - HarperPrism; ISBN: 0061054909
Love in Vein II : 18 More Tales of Vampiric Erotica (2000) - Book Sales; ISBN: 0785812113

Biography:
Courtney Love (1998) - Orion mass market paperback fiction; ISBN: 0752815598

Summary: