By Audrey Fong
I remember the first time I heard Boy Kill Boy’s song, “Suzie.” It was 2006. “Suzie” was the iTunes free song of the week, and I listened to it whenever my brother let me borrow his iPod, a novelty at the time. From the moment I heard the soaring intro and singer Chris Peck barking out “this is not a movie,” I was hooked.
I wanted more of it; I wanted all of it. I wanted to drown in rock music and I had my own playlist to guide me on that mission. There was something about these songs, about rock and roll itself, that drew me in and to this day, hasn’t let me go.
Reading Mike Chen’s latest novel, Vampire Weekend (a cheeky nod to the band Vampire Weekend, I presume), brought me back to my early days of discovering music.
The novel opens with punk rock-loving vampire Louise Chao in the middle of a band audition. Just when things are going well, that she aced her audition, she sneezes blood and cries tears of blood. Turns out someone is microwaving something with garlic next door, triggering her allergies and almost outing her as a vampire. Defeated by yet another dashed attempt at joining a band, life only goes downhill for her as she learns that there’s a district-wide blood outage, meaning she’s out of food.
And if that weren’t enough, two strangers ring her doorbell in search of her deceased aunt, whose house she inherited. It turns out the strangers are her estranged younger brother, who’s aged several decades while she’s stayed in her 20s, and his grandson, Ian. With Ian’s mother dying from cancer, his grandfather needs help taking care of him and distracting him from his mother’s illness—hence why he’s searching for their aunt.
Initially, Louise is reluctant to get involved, given that it’s hard to let humans into your life when you’re trying to hide your vampire lifestyle. Whether it’s Ian’s newfound interest in rock and roll or his doting behavior towards Louise’s precious corgi, Lola (based on Chen’s real life corgi), Louise soon finds herself opening up to him and taking him under her wing (No pun intended – vampires do not turn into bats within this tale). By doing so, she opens up her world of punk rock to him at the risk of accidentally revealing her world of vampirism as well.
Where the novel succeeds is Chen’s clear love for rock and roll as told through Louise’s taste in music — David Bowie, The Pixies, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are just a few of the bands referenced. At times, this fervor reads gimmicky such as the repeated mentions of Louise’s leather jacket, but it didn’t bother me much because—come on—don’t all rock and roll fans have a few leather jackets? I know I do.
As the novel progresses, Louise grows more attached to Ian and devotes herself to transforming him into a rock enthusiast, both to distract him from his mother’s illness and because he’s the first human in a long time that she can share this passion with ever since her last human best friend and concert buddy, Marshall, died in a car accident.
In one scene, as it becomes clearer that Ian’s mom is not going to beat cancer, she decides to bring him to his first live show ever, something she hopes will be as momentous for him as it was for her, given that the last concert she attended was the same night Marshall passed, an emotional hurdle she hasn’t quite passed. The way Louise shares her goals of bringing him to the show — “I’d blow his mind with the magic of live gigs” and “I wanted him to have a sense of liftoff only offered by live music, the euphoria and hypnosis that I first experienced seeing David Bowie” — perfectly describes how I feel at concerts, the excitement when the lights dim and the music crescendos, the liftoff that occurs from hearing a particular guitar solo or a favorite verse. It perfectly renders the way live music captures our imaginations and unites us as fans for a few hours.
At this point, you’re probably thinking, but what about the vampires? And that’s fair. It is titled Vampire Weekend and follows a vampire protagonist; you are justified in wanting some vampire action.
For all of you vampire enthusiasts (Chen considers himself one), there is plenty of vampire lore in addition to the demystification of certain lies perpetuated about vampires. Chen asserts that they aren’t inherently glamorous, a jab at every YA series with a sexy vampire love interest. These moments in which Chen upends our expectations of vampires, such as garlic being an allergy, are quite funny and at times, can feel anticlimactic, but that sense of mundanity that he imbues into Louise’s life as a vampire is the joke and he pulls it off well. What adds to the mundanity of vampires and thus, amplifies the joke, is how he paints the vampire community similarly to the Yelp community — both the vampire community and Yelpers are connected through an app, expected to share information with each other, and have a community leader. Like Yelp, there’s also an overemphasis on community – that you should tell the app where blood may be available from the way Yelp encourages users to share restaurants with other community members, something that grates on Louise’s nerves.
While I loved the emphasis on music and the lameness of the vampires, the novel is not without its flaws. The main issue is the way it amps up the drama in the last chapters in a way that borders upon the ridiculous. Without giving it away, I will say the novel goes from Louise’s burgeoning relationship with Ian, her struggle finding blood, and their shared love for rock and roll to hardcore vampire lore and vampire fights, an appeal to more traditional vampire fans that the novel didn’t necessarily need. It feels like a huge detour from what started as a story about family and rock music. However, if you’re mostly searching for a fun novel, then it’s easy to ignore this change and just enjoy the ride.
That being said, the novel is exactly what you’d expect from Chen — funny, touching, and clever in the way it defies our speculative fiction assumptions. It might not be exactly what vampire fanatics are looking for due to its general lack of gore and sex (looking at you Twilight, Van Helsing, and Dracula fans). However, it is, without a doubt, my favorite Chen novel so far. Its characters are compelling, complex, and fun. And of course, the way Chen weaves his own passion for rock music and his corgi, Lola, into the novel makes it feel like his most personal story yet.
Vampire Weekend is ultimately a touching story of family meeting for the first time, bonding, and passing down their passions to the next generation, all seen through the lens of punk rock with a serving of vampire humor on the side.
Vampire Weekend is available from Alexander Book Co, Bookshop, The Last Bookstore, Skylight Books, Strand Book Store, and Waucoma Bookstore.
Audrey Fong is your stereotypical Southern Californian. She loves the beach, drinks more boba than the doctor recommends, and has an Insta-famous dog. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.