The Reformed Vampire Support Group

Catherine Jinks (author)

Allen & Unwin, Australia: 2009; 329pp

ISBN: 9781741756722

Genres: adventure, fantasy, gothic

Issues: friendship, identity

Nina is a vampire. She also writes vampire novels. Unlike the beautiful, superhuman heroine she writes about, Nina loathes being a vampire. It's not nearly as much fun as fiction would have the reader believe. No modern novel mentions the stomach cramps, sore eyes, muscle aches and general sense of unwellness that comes from being a vampire who refuses to drink human blood.

And nobody seems to realise that not aging can be a real drawback if you were made a vampire when you were fifteen and are now actually 52years old and still living at home with your mother. Even the vampire support group she attends is a bore as it's been running almost as long as she's been a vampire, she knows each member as well as she knows herself and part of the purpose of the group is to make sure that there are no new members - that no new vampires are ‘made'. But the group is dragged kicking and screaming into a harsher reality when it becomes apparent that there is a vampire hunter on the prowl. One of the group has been staked and it looks as if they're all on the hit list. Who will be next? And can Nina stop them before her fellow vampires - the closest thing she has to family - are killed?

Catherine Jinks has obviously had enough of the glorification of all things vampyric and The Reformed Vampire Support Group is her blackly humorous attempt to knock a little of the glamour off the genre. Jinks has applied her ability to create believable characters and relationships to writing a novel that is the antithesis of those of Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer et al. She explores what is more likely to happen to people who have been forced to interact for decades - that they'll get on each other's nerves, know far too much about each other's less attractive traits and habits, and that like many marriages, familiarity breeds not only irritation but also contempt. Her vampires are real people rather than genre stereotypes. They're far from attractive, they find immortality a curse rather than a blessing, and pecking order, based on their vampire age, is as important as it is for chickens. Although a little slow in narrative terms, this is a darkly funny novel that will appeal to those with a quirky sense of humour.