Genevieve Jagger (2024) Fragile Animals.

Jagger’s novel is about a poet, Noelle, having a meltdown over her second collection of poems. Being an outsider likely complicated Noelle’s life, considering she is around the same age as the author. (Jagger identifies as autistic and reveals she had been Catholic). A good match of world views with a vampire called Moses added.

There are several kinds of coming-of-age novels. We have the traditional Bildungsroman. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. An orphan and outcast finding her way in society. Elements of predestination and true love finding a way in a Gothic landscape.

The everyday adolescent cynicism of Holden Caulfield’s journey through New York City is an initiation into the adulthood. Catcher in the Rye with themes of alienation, mirrored by that loss of childhood innocence.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens translated as Demon Copperhead (2022) by Barbara Kingsolver.

One of Jagger’s chapters is titled Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit a direct reference to Jeanette Winterson’s semi-autographical novel.

Existentialism. Why am I here? Does god exist and why does he hate me? Noelle follows an interior journey to find out the answer to these questions.

The structure of the novel relies on revealing what happened to Noelle to bring her to Miss Fraser’s rooms in rainy Rothesay in mid-winter. A back and forth between love interests. Mirrored by Moses, the vampire’s conversations with her in the same vein (no pun intended). The big revelation of whether he’s really a vampire and will she consent to more than sex leads to the bloody denouements.

‘For a moment I’m not a good person or a bad person not a straight person or a gay person that a just God could hate.’

Read on.

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