Drawing Blood

Poppy Z. Brite offers up another dreamy, sex-filled story of teens and young adults who have grown up to be punks, goths, and the beautiful, fragile people on the margins of late 20th century society. Her writing here is less florid than in her first novel Lost Souls, but then again none of these characters are vampires. She also has a real plot for this novel, unlike her first. It's an unlikely love story with a smattering of the supernatural, much of which is actually drug-induced hallucination, and an improbably happy ending that comes out of romance novels more than a horror novel

But I wished everyone well in this book. Although some early chapters are in New Orleans, the novel takes place mostly in MIssing Mile, North Carolina, a setting Brite also used in Lost Souls. Redneck thugs put in the occasional appearance, but it seems like a really nice place with nice people. Twenty years ago, a washed-up, alcoholic underground comic artist killed his wife, youngest son, and himself in a rundown house out on Violin Road. (Brite comes up with excellent place names.) The murderer drugged but did not kill his older son, Trevor. Trevor, after 20 years in state homes and wandering the country, returns to confront his past in the now kudzu-covered house he did not die in. There is also Zach, a 19-year-old, beautiful computer hacker from New Orleans on the run from the Feds, They meet and it is awkward love at first sight. That awkwardness doesn't last long and. when not confronting the dead or tripping on mushrooms, they spend much of the novel having sex. Come to think of it, they have sex while tripping on mushrooms as well.

In the case of horror movies, received wisdom has it that your core audience is males between 16 and 25. If Ms. Brite is hitting that audience with her books, things have changed more than I realized. It is impossible, however, to imagine this story involving a heterosexual relationship, and Ms. Brite has an excellent understanding of both the horniness and vulnerability of young men finding themselves in love for the first time.

Brite's story has a well-done hallucinatory sequence, but some of her more traditional scares are just that. Lights flash on and off. There are phone calls that make no sense. Zach is locked in the bathroom and one faucet on the sink starts gushing blood. I didn't think that moment worthy of Ms. Brite, until the other faucet started gushing semen. But her heart doesn't seem to be in these scare moments, She is more interested in atmosphere, and each locale is perfectly realized.

I am curious to read her third novel, if for no other reason than it is apparently so graphically violent that both her U.S. and British publisher tuned it down. But given the thought and sensitivity brought to her first two novels, I can't help but think that even her gross-out effort will be worth readying.