Leaving the mice behind, we go to present-day New York for my next YA read. Fifth in a series of fifteen.
Westerfeld, Scott (2005). Peeps. NY: Razorbill. 312 pages.
Summary and evaluation: Three things you need to know about Cal Thompson. One – he is super-strong, and can see in the dark. Two – he owes these abilities to a parasite he carries. Three – people with this parasite are the source of our legends about vampires, zombies and other questionable things that go bump in the night. How did Cal get this bug? From a one-night stand, shortly after arriving in New York as a college freshman. The parasite is sexually transmitted, which means Cal has to track down all of his ex-girlfriends. Because the parasite doesn’t just give you super powers – most people who are infected eventually go crazy.
I am old school – I don’t like vampire books unless they are titled and/or feature Dracula. Teen vampires? No. Thanks. I liked Peeps though, probably because I consider it only partially a vampire book, or even a horror book. With all its talk of parasites and optimal virulence, Peeps is as much science fiction as it is horror. The book kind of reminded me of the film Alien, with the way it borrowed tropes from both genres.
The other thing I noticed about Peeps – and maybe this isn’t unusual for YA novels in this day and age – is how prominent a part sex plays in the story. While on the one hand there’s not any explicit or graphic content (all the action takes place ‘off-screen’) any novel that describes one of the characters as ‘freaky and loud in bed’ isn’t exactly shy about the matter. Refreshingly, Peeps doesn’t try to scare readers. The penalty for catching the sexually transmitted parasite is not death, but not being able to ever have sex again (for fear of transmitting the disease). To teens with little first hand experience of mortality, the prospect of never having sex might be far more frightening than death.
Booktalk hook: Vampires. The damn vampires.