Irma: Memoirs of a Vampire Gone Dry

Rating:
Summary: Irma: a great read
Review: What's a nice Jewish girl to do when she discovers she's a vampire? Keep on filing those ever-increasing incisors, or go with the flow? This is the dilemma which faces Irma Lebowswitz. Her family has always been a little odd (read 'totally off the wall'), but, after all, this is New York. Odd is a credential.

This is a book full of delightful surprises. Its author, Laine Jacob, adores words and exploits their power to please and intrigue to the fullest. Her characters jump impetuously and sidle deviously from the pages. Her bemused heroine paddles cautiously on as hilarious family set-pieces break in waves about her. She finds true love - where else - at the dentist. But it's not the dentist...

The novel is by turns funny, fascinating and poignant. All human life is there from Fellini films to fast food, bookbinders to betrayal, the Carpathians to Queens. Irma is prone to deeply entertaining ruminative soliloquies on many topics ranging from the slim instep of an English lord: - "The only attraction to learning to ride a horse is seeing men pull off their high riding boots" - to the acquisition of vampire lore: "The scientific information 'Vampires don't blush' was replayed last week when my grandmother opened what she said "looked like any other Lord and Taylor's bag to me" which was true except that it was in my room under my pillow."

Irma has her seventeenth birthday in her favourite deli: "I worked on a birthday wish that would not backfire in case some errant good fairy was sitting in the next booth waiting to grant my every desire..."Give me normal," I thought. I might even have stated my wish aloud but the idea of the waiter saying, "A normal on rye, hold the mustard," presented fearful possibilities."

Poor Irma. Not only may she be a vampire, but she may not even be Jewish. Does the confusion of Christian Levy lie before her? (see p.26) Read this book!