Theodore Sturgeon - Some Of Your Blood

[dem bones]

Theodore Sturgeon - Some Of Your Blood (Sphere, 1967: Originally Ballantine, US, 1963)

Cover printed in England by Acorn Litho Feltham Middlesex

Blurb:
Behaviour: Dangerous
Psychosis: Unclassified violent

The "hero" of this extraordinary novel is a monster, a fiend, a warped and twisted creature with an insane craving for human blood.
Yet the monster is also a human being - and it is Theodore Sturgeon's peculiar talent that he makes us understand how his mind works, and why he is what he is ....

"Sturgeon makes completely credible a not unprecedented but still astonishing case of extreme criminal psychosis - one of the season's most absorbing books" - New York Times.

It begins with an exchange of letters between two over-stretched psychiatrists at the Army Base Hospital. George Smith, 23, has been referred to them, "psychosis unclassified, dangerous violent", after punching a Major Manson. George's case notes have been lost in the system these past three months while he languishes, forgotten, in solitary confinement. It's Dr. Philip Outerbridge's task to ease him out of the Army without any headlines or legal repercussions. So Dr. Outerbridge spends half an hour with George and finds him quiet, polite and cooperative. After what happened, he just wants out of the forces, so it's simply a case of hurrying things along. To give the impression that he's treating his "disorder", Outerbridge presents George with pen and paper and tells him to write the story of his life. George obliges, beginning with the circumstances behind his assault on Major Manson - there was a far more disturbing side to the incident than recorded in the notes - before getting stuck into his harrowing childhood memories with a wife-beating town drunk for a father and a pathetic, arthritic doormat for a ma. With each revelation Outerbridge realises that he's dealing with a very dangerous young man. George really does want "Some Of Your Blood" and has to have it to get by ....

still some way to go, but it's the third time i've read this human vampire novel, and, while the famous final revelation is probably not quite as shocking as when first published, it's still a powerful and incredibly moving piece of writing. Sturgeon's misfits are often sympathetic characters - think the pitiful lunk in his classic novella Bright Segment - and so it is with George, an abomination even in his own eyes, but far more sinned against than sinner.

one to think about; the novel clocks in at under 140 pages and that really is all Sturgeon needs, but you wonder if he'd have to pad it to twice the length to get published in 2010.

[Dr Strange]

Picked up the 1961 U.S. Ballantine p.b. of this the other day (in very good nick - £2). Just started reading it, and like where it seems to be going...