By: Poppy Z. Brite Publisher: Dell Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Dell Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 416 Publication Date: October 01, 1994 Release Date: October 01, 1994
Product Description: Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity. Reprint. K. AB.
Beautifully disturbing Having misplaced an entire box of horror fiction in my most recent move, I decided to re-acquire Drawing Blood, and I'm so very glad that I did. Brite's focus in her more recent fiction has shifted a good deal, but it doesn't make this novel any less wonderful as a testimony to her style. Psychological trauma and haunted houses have rarely been written about in such an eloquent and moving way.
Sexually Explicit Beauty Brite, Poppy Z. "Drawing Blood", Dell, 1994.
Explicit
Amos Lassen
I first read Poppy Brite's "Drawing Blood" when it came out but as I was perusing one of my favorite websites, I came across a discussion of the book that made me want to go back and read it again. I was surprised at how much I had missed so I decided to sit down and put my thoughts into writing. "Drawing Blood" is about Robert McGee, a man acclaimed as an underground cartoonist who has recently moved with his family from Texas to New Orleans (home of author Poppy Brite). He finally decides that because of the excessive drinking and violence of New Orleans that he best relocate and moves again--this time to Missing Mile, North Carolina. Soon after settling there, he kills his wife, his young son and himself. One other son, Trevor, 5, remains alive. Some twenty years later, Trevor, also a cartoonist, returns to Missing Mile and what was his family's home to face the truth he has been avoiding and to face the demons that haunt him. He is afraid that he will end up as did his father but he realizes that being single, he has no one to kill. He befriends a young computer hacker, Zachary, who is running from New Orleans and the law. Trevor finds that the house has its own dark force and it threatens him. Poppy Brite is a genius in building characters and she builds Trevor, both in his youth and as an adult and we feel we know him. Zachary is also well developed and we get to know him through his escapades. In fact gives us a complete cast of characters including the residents of Missing Mile and the FBI agents chasing after Zachary that are well created and wonderfully characterized. When Zach and Trevor meet and cautiously begin a friendship which eventually becomes a love relationship, we watch their characters unfold and their coupling is somewhat strange. There are no sexual roles and they change with the weather. We see who each is, where he has been and what brings them together and what pushes them apart. They are complete characterizations of gay men and they are very erotic (and written of by a straight woman). The men share a love story that is based on horror. We love them because Brite created them to be loved even with their many faults. Brite gives us all the pieces that go into the making of a man and we build their characters with her. There is a lot of gay sex here and the men, Zach and Trevor were emos before we know of such a term. Their loving gives us a fine read and Brite writes with a poetry that is all her own. Here is a book you will not soon forget--not only because of the brilliant characterization and readable story but also because the author has such a wonderful way with words.
Classic Horror When her first novel, Lost Souls, was released, Brite breathed new life into the bland, clichéd vampire by giving us vamps that loved being what they were and mixing them with goth characters who were actually more than brooding, pretentious teens in black clothes. In short, she made her characters real people.
With Lost Souls, Brite burst on the scene. Wisely, she was not one to be satisfied with her popular vampire characters, and we were treated to another reinvention by Brite, the haunted house story, Drawing Blood.
The plot has been well detailed in other reviews here, so this review can be all about the writing which is as appealing today as it was 15 years ago.
From the beginning, Brite shows a critical eye for detail in her writing. Each locale is described fully, but without frustrating verbosity. In very naturalistic, yet somehow poetic prose, Brite describes not only the sights of a place, but also the smells, and the result is that we get the psychological reaction of the characters to everything that is about them.
And the same detail goes into her characters. The five-year-old Trevor at the beginning of the novel rings utterly true, the wide-eyed outlook of a child tempered by the reality that he has lived with a father who is unpredictable bordering on abusive. Yet, Trevor's father isn't reduced to some stereotyped drunkard. We get to see inside him for the brief time we know him. We see the crushed dreams, the pressures, the paranoia that lead him to do the horrible thing he does. When Bobby McGee kills his family, we as readers are horrified by it, but we can see why it happened, why it was almost inevitable. The only thing we can't understand is why he didn't kill Trevor as well. And that in itself is what brings Trevor back to Missing Mile some 20 years later.
We're also introduced to Zachary Bosch, a computer hacker out of New Orleans, who finds himself dangerously on the wrong side of the law. As he flees New Orleans, we also get to meet the people important in his life, most notably Eddy, a Asian American stripper who is in love with Zach but also his best buddy. But we don't get some stereotype here either. Eddy isn't the stock hag. She's feisty, smart, inventive and someone to be reckoned with. She knows Zach is not a good match for her and she needs to move on. But she can't and she never broods about it and never once do you feel that beyond Zach lies a life of loneliness. And the FBI agents following Zach also are character fuller than one would guess in a horror novel.
The residents of Missing Mile are equally fascinating, a mix of character traits which could have become cartoonish in lesser hands, but remain blessedly real. You can see Kinsey's smile, feel the weight of his family history. You can feel the relationship between Terry and his girlfriend. Even Calvin, who threatens to come between Zach and Trevor, has a likable streak.
But the novel starts to really sing when Trevor and Zach meet one another in Missing Mile. Both members of the walking wounded, the two cautiously get to know one another and, ultimately, become lovers. It isn't an easy courtship given the baggage each of them carries, and it isn't a relationship that is easy to define. There are no tops and bottoms here. No alpha or submissive. Like every relationship, it changes with the ebb and flow of time and events that draw them closer together and push them further apart. It is a wonderful exploration of who each character has been, who they want to become and who they might be together if their relationship lasts. It is, to this day, one of the fullest depictions of gay men I have ever found in literature.
Now, don't get me wrong. This is not some mushy love story in the slightest. It is pure horror--albeit heavy on the psychological horror. The tension is palpable, the finely tuned description, exquisite, and the dialog completely real. Each character has a purpose in this piece. There is very little fat in this novel, each aspect weaving together easily with those that came before and those which follow. By the time we get to the climax of the book, we are utterly invested in each of these characters. We want Trevor and Zach to survive, and we understand how Missing Mile will never be the same after the events that take place in that dilapidate old house out on Violin Road. We care because Brite created characters we love despite all their faults, drawing us a vivid picture of where we have been living as we took the journey along with Trevor and Zach. We care because Brite has taken the time to show us all the pieces that go into making the puzzle of man. In short, she has created a place we want to visit and characters who feel like real friends.
For me, Drawing Blood is a classic...classic horror, classic gay fiction and classic character fiction It was and remains a ground breaking literary work and should be required reading for readers and writers of horror, gay fiction, gay romance and even gay erotica. This is how it is done, folks.
Originally reviewed for Uniquely Pleasurable.
Returning to Birdland... DRAWING BLOOD by Poppy Z. Brite has everything a great horror novel should have; likeable characters, excellent back story, a moody atmosphere, and a sense of reality, that of which is often missing in most books. The novel is shocking, exciting, erotic; it's so many things at once that it's hard to describe.
The novel opens up with the McGees ready to move to a new town. Bobby McGee is convinced that he can take his family further than the small town of Missing Mile, but ultimately fails to do so when the old car breaks down. So, after moving into a small house, life seems to start out normal enough. Little Trevor has discovered his love of drawing, which he's inherited from his father, his little brother is content with being a toddler, and Bobby's drawing while his wife works small jobs in town.
The day after Bobby tells Trevor he draws a mean junkie, the oldest child's world is torn apart. He wakes to find his mother and little brother dead, his father hanging by a rope in the bathroom.
Fast forward twenty years and we're introduced to a few other characters. Eddwina, or Eddy, a woman who works as a stripper down at the Pink Diamond; Zach, a young computer hacker who makes his money through theft and fraud; Kinsey, who is still haunted by what happened to the McGees, though is now running a bar called The Secret Yew; and, of course, our own Trevor. It immediately becomes apparent that Trevor and Zack are our main characters. Trevor's going back to Missing Mile because he's finally ready to face his past; Zach's running from the law after a friend messages him on a hacker`s forum saying `They`re on to you.'
Through an odd twist of fate, the two young men meet fall in love. Trevor learns of Zach's law troubles while Zach learns of Trevor's own, of the birdland that haunts the back of his lover's mind. And while Trevor is searching for the reason behind Bobby's murder-suicide mission, the pieces are slowly starting to piece together, especially when they're living in a house that's tasted blood.
DRAWING BLOOD was my first taste of Poppy's fiction, and I've enjoyed it immensely. It's been a long time since a novel has taken hold of me and literally forced me to keep reading. I would read for hours at a time, delving into the dark world that Poppy created in Missing Mile, North Carolina. The dark atmosphere and moody, disturbing story is appealing to any horror fan.
Those who are thinking of NOT reading this novel based on the gay element, you better change your mind. Yes, while there are gay men as the main characters, that doesn't distract from the story any. While some people may think that all gay men are the stereotypical flamboyant people that the media illustrates, Brite gives all of her characters personality, hopes, dreams, fears, and even dark nightmares.
This novel is definitely a must-read for any horror fan. The atmosphere is perfect, the story is chilling, and the characters are interesting enough to make you worry about them in ways that you don't normally worry about fictional people. Poppy really does an amazing job drawing you into her world and gluing you to it.
Second best, after Lost Souls Poppy blows doors on Anne Rice... which is saying a lot because I intensely love some of AR's older stuff. Zach and Trevor will become permanent inhabitants of your brain after you read this book. Poppy does characterization like no one else... her characters live and breathe - in your own personal space.
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