REVIEW: The Society of S, Susan Hubbard

The Soci­ety of S by Susan Hub­bard reads like a mod­ern day vam­pire story and a com­ing of age story with 13 year-old Ariella Mon­tero nar­rat­ing. Is there such a thing as a lit­er­ary vam­pire novel? Ms. Hub­bard cer­tainly writes her tale in a schol­arly fash­ion but her vam­pire tale really doesn’t add any­thing “new” to a genre sat­u­rated with vam­pire lore ad nau­seum. Her prose is rather dry and the plot­ting and pac­ing was very uneven thereby mak­ing it very easy for me to put this book down.

The Soci­ety of S has a bit of Anne Rice’s “Inter­view With the Vam­pire” type of style, with Ariella gath­er­ing the answers to some of the ques­tions she’s had about her life and her fam­ily and putting them in her jour­nal. The author doesn’t write in a jour­nal­is­tic fash­ion but Ariella does at cer­tain times refer to her audi­ence with open ended questions.

Ariella has led a shel­tered life, being home schooled and hav­ing her own cook, Mrs. McGar­ritt, to pre­pare her meals for her (she’s a veg­e­tar­ian). Her par­ents are estranged. Her father is a sci­en­tist and an eru­dite who is described as being very hand­some. He is a bit of a stiff col­lar, often cit­ing the works of Edgar Alan Poe and other poets in con­ver­sa­tion. His height, pale looks and dress attire of sun glasses, trench coat and hat often leaves a last­ing impres­sion on peo­ple. Ariella says he has lupus and she her­self has some type of weak immune sys­tem so she’s rarely left her house. One day, Mrs. McGar­ritt decides to intro­duce Ariella to her fam­ily. She becomes fast friends with her daugh­ter, Kath­leen and has a roman­tic inter­est in her son, Michael.

The main story arc is about Ariella wrestling with her self-identity with a sub­plot cen­ter­ing on her find­ing her mother. There are very few super­nat­ural events in this story, because it is sim­ply not the focus. In fact, half the novel is over before you encounter any­thing “extra­or­di­nary”. There are vam­pires liv­ing amongst us and that’s noth­ing new. The story is a bit heavy handed on the sci­ence behind vam­pirism and the advanced tech­nol­ogy that has allowed this sub­cul­ture to thrive in mod­ern soci­ety. For instance, blood sup­ple­ments being used as blood sub­sti­tutes and the con­tin­u­ing research behind mak­ing arti­fi­cial blood is imper­a­tive for their sur­vival. Ariella speaks of “other” super­nat­ural beings liv­ing amongst humans and hav­ing high posi­tions in our state gov­ern­ment and sci­ence com­mu­nity. Her goal in writ­ing this jour­nal is to relay those facts to us mere mor­tals in hopes of ren­der­ing a bet­ter of under­stand­ing of the vam­pire community.

The story is very uneven and most of it is unevent­ful. Ariella’s father’s brief time at Cam­bridge was one of the few inter­est­ing parts of the book as well as the love story. There’s also a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion that really takes a back seat to the other two story arcs. Encoun­ter­ing evil in the aca­d­e­mic set­ting is just not orig­i­nal to me and reminded me other such sto­ries that use that back­drop as well. The author goes through the usual vam­pire folk­lore, acknowl­edg­ing some of it (aver­sion to sun­light), dis­miss­ing oth­ers (shape shifters). They do have the power of invis­i­bil­ity (some­thing to do with shift­ing elec­trons) and read­ing thoughts. Her vam­pires are quite evolved. You still have a few vamps who have dis­dain for humans along with other sects of this cul­ture want­ing to just blend in unnoticed.

There’s a few flash­backs, mainly of Ariella’s father telling her what hap­pened to him at Cam­bridge and explain­ing the events that led up to her mother’s dis­ap­pear­ance after she was born. I didn’t quite buy into the ratio­nal­iza­tion of why Ariella was left when she was a baby. It just didn’t make sense to me. Ariella starts hav­ing dreams of cross­word puz­zles and other things that relates to her mother. Over the course of a sum­mer, there are sub­tle changes to Ariella that might be best described as “unusual” for a teen girl to expe­ri­ence. How­ever, her father says that her fate regard­ing her “mor­tal­ity” remains uncer­tain because since he was afflicted as a vam­pire, he’s not sure if she will become one, too.

The Soci­ety of S will not be as pop­u­lar as Stephe­nie Meyer’s vam­pires, I’m afraid. I’d have to dis­agree with Ms. Har­ris on that cover quote because the two author’s nar­ra­tive voice couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent. The reviews I’ve seen of this book so far has been pretty mixed. I’d have to side with those who found this story less than cap­ti­vat­ing. The most intrigu­ing char­ac­ter was Ariella’s father, Raphael and I wish he would have been the nar­ra­tor because his back story of run­ning across evil would have been much more inter­est­ing told from his pov. Ariella her­self was an ok nar­ra­tor but often I found her bor­ing with her knowl­edge very lim­ited for a shel­tered 13 year old.

The author doesn’t allow super­nat­ural events to over­ride the telling of a young girl’s self-discovery. The “extra­or­di­nary” is incor­po­rated into this story but, again, it is not the focus. The story is about a young girl ascert­ing her self-identity and find­ing her mother and pos­si­bly reunit­ing her par­ents. The age­less teen-age fan­tasy. The Soci­ety of S is a com­ing of age story and I’ve read my share of those and often I’ve enjoyed them. How­ever, this story just didn’t make any impres­sion on me despite the beau­ti­ful prose. The premise seemed promis­ing but it was poorly exe­cuted, IMO. My grade, C-.

For Fur­ther Reading

• Vam­pire Knight Story & Art by Mat­suri Hino
• Break­ing Book News Alert! Megan Whalen Turner Haz New Book Com­ing Out!
• Dead to the World (Sookie Stack­house No.4), Char­laine Harris
• REVIEW: ‘Real’ Story & Art­work by Take­hiko Inoue
• Reader’s Cor­ner: HBO’s True Blood (Sookie Stack­house Series): So What’s the Verdict?
• Neil Gaiman’s ‘Grave­yard’ Tells The Story of a Boy Raised By the Dead
• REVIEW: ‘Kin (The Good Neigh­bors)’ by Holly Black and Illus­trated by Ted Naifeh
• REVIEW: Water Baby by Ross Camp­bell (MINX)
• REVIEW: ‘Club Dead’ by Char­laine Harris
• REVIEW: Blood Alone by Masayuki Takano (vol.4)

Tagged as: Coming of Age, Susan Hubbard, Teen literature, Vampires