Child of the night

read a book a couple of years ago called ‘Child of the Night’ by Nancy Kilpatrick. this woman is a brilliant writer and although she did not change the essential essence of the vampire that we have come to know over the last century; the absolute beauty and perfection, speed, power and danger and of course the vampiric tendency for blood and avoidance of the sun, she has brought out something else in the vampire story.

the book is not a traditional love story nor is it a horror. she brings out the true nature of human kind in her vampire characters or should i say she amplifies it. the fact that we use others for our own benefit and then discard them when they no longer amuse or give us what we want. our desire to be accepted and the fear we have of dying. even more so our desperate search for love. (even though we might never know that we search)

our hero is in truth not remotely loving or that appealing, if you disregard his beauty. our heroin is used and abused physically, mentally and emotionally, the writer’s aim, i think, is to encourage you to hate him and our heroin (who might possibly be HIV positive) cannot possibly love him right? wrong!

a nice twist that does make it into a love story of it’s own is that a mortal has a child from a vampire and it is his choice what he would like to be. what is most clear is that Nancy Kilpatrick understands human nature very well. that often no matter how badly others appear to treat us there is usually something in them that causes us to love them. when we get close they show us things about themselves that although it doesn’t erase the bad about them it over shadows it making that part which causes us pain  to no longer matter.  people often do things that we neither like or understand, especially the ones we love and although we ask ourselves how is it possible to love someone who hurts me or how can someone i love hurt me? we need to realize that this is not the question to ask. we should be asking ourselves do we love the one who hurts us enough to, not over look the bad that they do, but to stay and love them including the bad that they do.  because the the good in them is greater than the bad. but if the good does not over shadow the bad is it worth it to remain? there i think is the crux of the matter as we are all capable of bad things whether or not the world sees it.

and of course the age old questions of can love conquer all?