Linger Awhile

by Russell Hoban

Irving Goodman, self-confessed dirty old man, is 83 years old and has just fallen in love. Unfortunately, Justine Trimble, satr of 1950s cowboy B-movies, has been dead for 47 years. He saw her first in Last Stage to El Paso, a lowlife black-and-whie Western, and has been unable to think of anything else since. Desperate, Goodman invokes the help of his old friend, Istvan Fallock, to see if they can't somehow coax a videotape to yield the 25-year-old Justine. So with a test tube, distillation of frog, a soupcon of primordial soup mixed with a suspension of disbelief, they summon her back to life. And to their surprise and consternation, she materializes. As a reward for lust and hubris, Irving gets a lot more than the affection and attention he'd bargained for. Thus beings an amazing tale of murder and mayhem in contemporary London, where sexy vampire cowgirls run amok, chased by men old enough to know better.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Vampires, Crime, Novels, British Literature, Literary Fiction

132 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Russell Conwell Hoban was an American expatriate writer. His works span many genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magical realism, poetry, and children's books. He lived in London, England, from 1969 until his death. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jordyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Holy. If i run out of fire starter I know what’s keeping me warm tonight.

[G. Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, while the story's subject matter is A#+, I just can't get into Hoban's style. But he does do some really cool, fun, original things here that I'm sure many other people would love. He's just not... sardonic enough? Twisted enough? Bleak enough? I don't know... he's a little too warm and fuzzy, even when dealing with horrific ideas for my taste.

[Jason Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, I'm a big fan of Hoban's stuff. His early books had a density of imagery and linguistic abandon that marked him as an original. His later books, the 'London novels', are lighter in tone and substance, featuring recurrent characters. Suspiciously often they also feature old men fulfilling their sexual fantasies (RH is no spring chicken...). Nonetheless, they are usually very funny, sometimes affecting, and have anarchic and playful gimmicks by which they earn their keep.

In this case, Irving Goodman (an old man...) becomes infatuated with a long-dead 1950s Western starlet, and gets a technically-skilled acquaintance to bring her back to life (by means of some amiable hokum involving capturing her particles in a "suspension of disbelief"). Of course, she is reborn in black and white, and to fill herself with colour and life she must drink blood. Vampire cowgirl in London: all very Hoban.

Fun as this setup is, with a half-dozen narrative viewpoints, a pinball plot and a short text (160 pages with lots of white space), there isn't the depth here to work up any emotional involvement. There are perhaps notions of the tragedy of our animal condition, which leaves us prey to humiliating infatuations and indignities, diverting us from bettering our lives, or even accepting our lot. But these themes are hardly more than sketched out.

There's always much to enjoy in Hoban's books, but they are not all masterpieces like Riddley Walker, and Linger Awhile is pretty slight. (And the cover price of £10.99 on this slender paperback is taking the piss...)

[Matthew Gatheringwater · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is a fantasy novel for the soon-to-be old. It features hard-drinking, vampire-spawning, sexy seniors who can't resist doing all the things they are old enough to know better than to do. It is like Frankenstein, but funny. It asks a lot of the same questions--What is our responsibility to our creations? Why are we so often disappointed by the realization of our ideals? How do I kill my monster?--but the answers are all tongue-in-cheek.

Since the novel is structured in a series of different first-person narratives, it is disappointing that the individual voices are not more distinctive. They all sound like the author to me. Fortunately, the author has a voice I like to hear.

Russell Hoban is probably best known for Riddley Walker and people who enjoyed that book will probably like this one, too. I'm now interested in reading more of Hoban's books.

Thanks, Marcia Lewton, for the recommendation.

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Suspension of disbelief is the first step in doing anything hitherto thought impossible."

A quick and mildly amusing male fantasy gone wrong, with a dash of sci fi, detective novel and quasi-Buddhist philosophy.

An old man falls in love with an actress from a black and white cowboy film and gets someone to bring her to life by dissolving particles of her (from video) in a "suspension of disbelief" (conceptually very slightly like the Infinite Improbability Drive in Hitchhiker's Guide?), adding it to a primordial soup and zapping with electricity. The problem is, she needs blood to gain colour and stay alive, which causes problems for those who created her and comes to the attention of the police.

I like the idea that "I've never read the whole Heart Sutra, but if form is emptiness, then not reading it is the same as reading it", but the best line has to be, "Her feet looked open minded."

[Gareth Howells · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was kindly lent to me while I am convalescing. I hadn't heard of it before, or the author, but my friend had raved about it. It was a fun farce based around a ludicrous plot that created a hunt for two vampires by a London police force, after some 'Weird Science' style process of lust fulfillment.
It wasn't amazing, but it often raised a smile and had a great pace and spirit to it.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I suppose the 81-year-old Russell Hoban intended this as a madcap romp through a wish-fulfillment fantasy of bringing an old movie star to life so she can be a girlfriend, but it reads mainly as a bunch of dirty old men trying to one-up each other. Try one of Hoban's earlier books like Pilgermann, a meditation on journeys and death, or a devastatingly good post-apocalyptic Britain of Riddley Walker, told entirely in a futuristic British patois and tons of double meanings and clever wordplay.

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am near the end of Deutcher's Trotsky trilogy. Though fascinating and powerful, the prose is a bit dense. Sometimes I have to take a break and read something else.

About thirty years ago, my friend Alan gave me a copy of "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban. It was an imaginative novel set after "the big flash-boom." I was taken with Hoban's style, his plot, and the creation of a argot language used by his futuristic characters.

So when I spotted "Linger Awhile" in a Daedalus catalog, I had to order it. I was not disappointed. Hoban is still a writer who can not be compared to any other writer I know of. "Linger Awhile" is set in contemporary London. There are a handful of characters who take turns giving their version of the story in alternating chapters: the detective, the coroner, a group of characters who share the role of protagonist and finally, the antagomnists, two vampires.

Hoban is a true wordsmith. "Linger Awhile" is filled with comic prose, puns, bizarre allegory, magical fantasy.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used to be in a band called The Hired Sportsmen, named after the children’s book Captain Najork and the Hired Sportsmen by Russell Hoban. Our singer rang Hoban (who was at the time quite ill), who agreed – with some bewilderment – to us using the name. It was only after this point that we discovered that Hoban was, in fact, a prolific author of magic-realism novels. Since then I’ve read Riddley Walker and Amaryllis Night and Day – the latter of which is one of the most lovable books I’ve read in the last five years. I also love Hoban because, of all of the writer’s rooms photographed in the Guardian Review section years ago, his was the only one which was a total pigsty. Linger Awhile is the most frivolous of Hoban’s books that I’ve read (Hollywood cowgirl is raised from the dead, subsequently becomes a vampire), but the leaps in logic and non sequiturs are wonderful.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

This cautionary tale by the great man in the final chapters of his life may rankle those whose feathers are easily fluffed. What feminist of any gender wants to read yet another tragic lament about dirty old men lusting after ripe young bodies etc?

Only this is RH and the moral of the story applies across the board: be very very careful what you wish for.

If you can relax and suspend your disbelief ( and maybe contempt) you might even get a few laughs as the three men who dare to tamper with reality meet their fate.

The biggest surprise for me was how subtly RH got me to sympathize with them somewhat, for their flippant insouciance in the face of the great mystery.

[Molly Schmidt · Rating 2 out of 5]

What happens when you mix the careless and audacious intentions of lustful old men, high tech magic and a beautiful 1950s Western movie star? A blood-sucking black and white cowgirl, obviously.

I found this book buried in a charity shop— the hand illustrated cover peaking my interest. Dead Western movie stars? Vampires in London? Toads? What is this book?!

The only way to read is book is in the Guy Ritchie cinematic form with that early noughties coloured lens, fast cut scenes, multiple character POV (each with their own agenda), and a banging soundtrack.

Admittedly, I could not follow the first few chapters and there were problematic Asian racist stereotypes that were unnecessary. I was impressed with the inclusion of Justine’s POV although she still felt like a one dimensional consensual sex doll, who could have absolutely partnered up with Grace (an icon) to ruin the agenda of the careless plans of the men involved.

The idea did end up outweighing the parameters of the book— the potential for diving deeper into Justine (and her autonomy which is referenced upon), vampirism, the ‘Jack the Ripper’ trope, creating a longer timeline of tension and plot would have given more time to flesh out aspects of the books that felt rushed or wrapped up too early.

But for a quick read that felt like trip, it was a crazy ride of a book!

[Lauren Barnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this off the back of reading "Fremder" and, as other reviewers have said, Hoban's later work is simply not as good as his early novels.

The idea is marvellous - an older man brings a long-dead movie star back to life only to discover she needs blood to stay alive and in technicolor. The concept is really great, and setting it in Soho seems ideal; in fact, inspired. But then nothing interesting is actually done with that idea. The plot is predictable and low-key at best, the characters seem to have no real motivation and the reconstituted movie star feels insignificant. Soho is almost criminally underused, as though he assumes the reader will make the location important to the book.

Perhaps most frustrating is how little you care about the people. The motivations are cliché, there's no emotional aspect to the story, except briefly with one of the women and even then it's dubious. The characters themselves are interchangeable (two are particularly identical, being both retired non-practicing Jewish men with no serious attachments and names beginning with "I" who use the same phrasing and film references).

I gave three stars for the idea alone, and maybe that was too generous, but I do think it could have been an amazing book. If only...

[Eli Bishop · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was one of a small number of Hoban works that I hadn't gotten around to reading during his life, out of a vague fear that I wouldn't like them and would feel bad about that, and then kept putting off after he died. I finally did read it and the impression I had had earlier was more or less right: it's my least favorite of his novels, which actively bothers me rather than just being disappointing because it's loosely a sequel to a great book (The Medusa Frequency), and because there are just enough glimpses here of good ideas (the film-based twist on vampirism, the way different POV characters first figure out the situation from different angles, the idea of complicating the problem with a second experiment) to make it feel like a heap of missed opportunities. There's some cringey stuff of the "I just made a dumbass bad-taste joke but at least another character pointed out that it was one" variety, but mostly it's just flat. Of course since it's Hoban there are still some lovely turns of phrase here and there.

[embo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I see what the book was /trying/ to do. Did it succeed? Not really. I see interesting themes that are pretty surface level, unlikable characters that you eventually feel for but it’s clumsily done, and an uninteresting ending. It’s whatever. The cover is more interesting than the book itself.

[Charlie Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars.

A standard Hoban romp but beyond the (great) setup and beyond the reflection on the relationship between age, lust and love, a pretty uninspired end result, lacking (nearly) all of the usual presence of signifiers and symbols in aid of the story.

[Oliver Kitchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a weird one. interesting though

[Conor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was in my backlog of books to rate, which is getting quite a bit oversized.

Here's the deal: Russel Hoban writes books that blur reality but are mostly about interaction between people. The proportion of reality blur and people interaction generally define how I feel about his books. If they're more people interaction, then I generally give them three stars, if they're more reality bending, they ease towards five.

I never regret reading Hoban, but I can't recommend some of his books over others because they're not where I really love his writing.

I would read this again, but I would not recommend it to people who have not read him, not over the extreme reality bending that I favor more. Or maybe I'd recommend it to someone who needed to be introduced to him. I'm not sure, really.

At any rate, I'd rather reread The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz because I feel like I failed to understand so much of it during the first reading. For some reason, confusion and difficulty of text continues to be more appealing and star-winning-ly-ish. Which is probably a silly, silly, rubric.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

83-year-old Irving Goodman falls in love, in 2004, with a long-dead actress in some western movies from the 50s. He approaches a friend to either bring the actress to him, or send him to the actress. The friend does the former, and in his turn falls in love with her, or her black-and-white avatar from the movies, grown in a vat.

The novel is told in alternating points of view from pretty much all the major characters in the novel. Hoban is a master of language and has some delicious puns and references built in (the colloidal soup that they reconstitute the actress into is called the suspension of disbelief). The characters are all well-drawn, even when they only get short passages in which to introduce themselves. The book, at the beginning especially is both poignant and funny.

For me, its pleasures fade a bet when the idea is worked out a little more and its shown how the actress survives in the modern world. It lost the poignancy (though maybe not the humor). Still, at only 132 pages it's a fast read, and Hoban's imagination is active.

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bizarre book--unsurprising, really, for Hoban, but still, what a concept. An old man infatuated with a movie star dead for 47 years gets a tech wizard friend to come up with a method of converting her video image to flesh. Two problems: 1) she is in black and white; 2) she is a vampire. Why a vampire? Who knows, but if you are willing to buy Hoban's playful account of how she is made flesh (it involved a fluid mix he calls a "suspension of disbelief"), why not? The book is narrated from multiple points of view, from the perspectives of many of the characters, some of whom are very minor (and whose inclusion as occasional narrators is puzzling). This potentially interesting strategy falls down somewhat in that all the characters speak in essentially the same voice. Nevertheless, this is a somewhat engaging read, part black comedy, part existential philosophy. Difficult to categorize; post-modern fantasy, I guess?

[Isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trawling through my local independent bookshop (yes! they still exist) amongst the chick-lit and historical sagas my eyes glanced upon a book jacket reminiscent of those dime novels from 40s America. Being a fan of all things retro, I started reading the blurb.

A reanimated 1950s actress turned vampire with a cast of aging cronies lusting after her - this sounded like my kind of book and indeed it is.

This is the first time I have read any of Russell Hoban's books and I shall now be attacking his backlist with the ferociousness of blood sucking Justine.

Soho is the perfect backdrop to reanimate a long-dead movie star and the characters in Hoban's book can be easily spotted in Soho of an evening.

I highly recommend this novella and hope Hoban keeps churning out a new book once a year.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads like a novelisation of a screenplay and it can be 'done' in a few hours. It is a 'spin' on the classic vampire tale, a 'hommage' to Hammer horror, based in the Soho of old men and women who worked once in the media. It may be no work of genius but it is witty, fast-paced, knowing and good-humoured - showing that sex and violence can be quite funny and that the former can still be a live issue when you are well over 60 (which has to be good news). Very very British. Think 'Carry On Screaming'.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old Codgers fancy 50s starlet, ressurect her from video twice, once with too many toads, regret it.

Whimsical light tone, and this is a very short book, starlets turned sort-of-vampire drinks lots of people. Ineffectually world weary police sit around and do very little, despite grasping exactly what is going on from no clues whatsoever. The swinging codgers have a nice time, at least at the start before they get to know their starlet too well. She has a fairly miserable time poor thing, especially the version of her full of hallucinagens.

[Agnieszka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird book. I like weird books.
It's short, easy to read, enjoyable. Makes it perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon or longer journey, as you're likely to finish it in one go.
I did not find it very funny, however, I'm not sure it was really meant to be. But a bit of extra humor would raise it a star.
I don't think it's a book you go out of your way to read, but if it's there it's worth flipping through and I shall reach for the author again.

[Mykle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russel Hoban's last book. It's a vampire-ish love story among septuagenarians, as observed by various characters in turn. It starts out a tiny bit far-fetched, but honestly I'd read anything Russel Hoban wrote about anything. The supernatural moments of the book are nothing for the Anne Rice fan, but the way all these wizened characters navigate their worlds, enlightened and weighed down by lifetimes of experience, is gorgeous.

[Padmavyuha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Russell Hoban for years, though I didn't enjoy his books from the 80's onwards, finding them unnecessarily raunchy. I've recently read a few of his much later books (not realising he'd just died) and found them more redemptive and less gratuitously porn-ish.

This one wasn't bad, I enjoy his style of switching between different characters' perspectives.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up secondhand and read it in a day. Must admit the cover attracted me, and whilst the build-up to this pulp story was good fun, the denouement seemed to be over rather quickly. Haven't read any Hoban before, but will now keep my eye out for other work.

[Justin Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book I'm uncomfortable recommending because it's Russell Hoban.

Underneath all the antics and happenings there's a sad story about longing and loss mixed in with cowgirl vampires born from a vat containing a "suspension of disbelief".

[Tree · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly amusing. While I really thought this book would be good, it was rather shallow and lacked believability.

[Shan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some strange people in this world with weird thoughts going through their minds but those thought, even though slightly disturbing make a decent book.

[Jeremy Preacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the weirdest vampire story I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them.