When I chose to review Ever Your Servant or How Retail really Sucks by K.A. Corlett I based my decision solely on the title. Having never worked in retail, I imagined the possibilities of how much it would really suck. But it’s apparent after a couple of chapters that the title is merely a pun. One of the main characters is a vampire! Meet Maximillien Lambert, the new owner of the Cyber Café at Weatherstons Department Store. He certainly shares the common attributes associated with vampires-creepy and pale with a powerful sexual allure-but he’s not your average vampire. He gives ballroom dance lessons and teaches meditation classes to the staff. An amusing, modern vampire, he can turn a teenage boy with impure thoughts into spaghetti or transform an uptight harpy into a sex-crazed kitten. Yet his accent and his old world mannerisms beguile many of the women at the department store. Especially Joelle Lachance, the bold young feminist manager of the health food shop who happens to be the reincarnation of the love of his life. Maximillien begins to plant memory-like dreams into her sleep recounting his chilling past. It’s enough to make Joelle fall in love, again, with the 239-year-old vampire and his impeccable piano playing. “Sweet mother it was like being sung soft porn by an incubus.” Maximillien may be a bloodsucking vampire, but this book, which roused a few laughs, rarely shows him as such. Ever Your Servant or How Retail Really Sucks is great at exploring the possibilities of inter-employee and inter-mortal dating. (Andrea Nene)
by K.A. Corlett, $17.99, 299 pgs, Corlata Press, 41 Major Street, London, ON, N5Z 1E2, kacorlett.com