Drawing Blood Poppy Z Brite

Drawing Blood: A Novel

Description

Poppy Z. Brite re-imagines the haunted house novel, creating a fresh, sensual, and totally original reading experience.

IT'S A PASSION. IT'S AN ART. IT'S THE ONLY WAY OUT. . .

In the house on Violin Road he found the bodies of his brother, his mother, and the man who killed them both—his father. From the house on Violin Road, in Missing Mile, North Carolina, Trevor McGee ran for his sanity and his soul, after his famous cartoonist father had exploded inexplicably into murder and suicide. Now Trevor is back.

In the company of a New Orleans computer hacker on the run from the law, Trevor has returned to face the ghosts that still live on Violin Road, to find the demons that drove his father to murder his family—and worse, to spare one of his sons. . . . But as Trevor begins to draw his own cartoon strip, he loses himself in a haze of lines and art and thoughts of the past, the haunting begins. Trevor and his lover plunge into a cyber-maze of cartoons, ghosts, and terror that will lead either to understanding—true understanding—or to a blood-raining repetition of the past. . . .

Praise for Drawing Blood

"Electrifying . . . explosive lyricism . . . [a] soul-sucking antagonist . . . rich background descriptions. That there is a Brite future never doubt."—Kirkus Reviews

"Exotica . . . disaffected youth . . . a spicy gumbo of sub-cultural hipness simmered in a cauldron of modern horror fiction."—Fangoria

"Darker and more exotic than Anne Rice, more cerebral than Stephen King . . . Horror is rarely this good."—Echo

Horror Fiction
Fantasy
Gay
All categories

About the author

Reviews

What people think about Drawing Blood

4.1

Reader reviews

This is not my usual sort of book. I am not a horror or a fantasy fan in the slightest. I would far rather read about women sitting in the laundrette down the street than ghosts & demons. Just thought we should get that clear before I say that...I really liked this book!

The characters were very well fleshed out, & the storyline so well paced, that it didn't feel like a cheap horror. The violence & more out-there moments were used to enhance the story rather than for shock value. The quality of the writing was such that in many ways, it was nearly a believable story.

I don't know where this particular book lies along the spectrum of Brite's work, but it has definitely made me see her as an author to read more from.
This is really a 4.5.Another of Brite's "is it romance or is it horror?" books. This one adheres almost perfectly to the typical romance formula, and still manages to be quite down and dirty. I felt like it was an ideal combination of both genres, although it didn't quite blow me out of the water.Poor kids...
My favorite Brite novel, and the one with the best characterization. A young man returns to the home where his father went homicidally insane years ago. While there, he meets and falls in love with a hacker on the run. Is their love enough to combat the sinister madness of the house?
A beautifully written, highly unpleasant story. Not, strictly speaking, horror - at least, it fails on my basic calculation. No one ever, for more than a few minutes, feels helpless. In fact, the horror is rather ineffectual - short-term scary, but never anything like overwhelming. It is a very nasty story, on several levels - lots and lots of (mostly illusionary, but not entirely) gore, but more importantly some seriously screwed-up characters. And all of them seem to be determined to do a thorough job of screwing up any parts of their lives that aren't already screwed up. Drugging yourself constantly (whether with legal or illegal drugs) is a really bad way of handling problems - they only show up later, and worse, and accompanied by the problems caused by the drugs. In fact, my objection to the book is less that it's horror and more that it's too literary - unpleasant things happening to unpleasant people. It does improve on most literary novels by having something of a happy ending - several of the characters are actually better off, both physically and emotionally, than they were when we first met them. So I'm not really sorry I read it. However, I have no intention of ever reading it again, or any others by the author. Not my cup of tea. If you truly enjoy R. Crumb comics, though, read this - you'll love it.
Wonderfully visual novel. Good characters and story held my attention. Great locations and had adecent story flow.
WOW-What an excellent read...the story is complicated, but the characters of Trevor and Zach are fully fleshed out and their story carries you along, a dark, widning road. More then just a Horror nove, or a haunted house story...it's about 2 haunted lives that meet and fall in love. Brilliant. I would have loved her to continue their story or write more horror-gay fiction, but it seems she has abandoned this genre. Too bad. What an engrossing world and characters she created in this novel-they deserved an after life.