El doctor Weyland es el profesor más respetado de una pequeña universidad de Nueva Inglaterra. Alto, maduro, de pelo acerado, sus modales anticuados cautivan a los estudiantes, y un magnetismo especial rodea todos sus actos.
Sin embargo, Weyland es un nombre falso, sus credenciales académicas son inventadas, y tras la fachada del erudito absorto en su trabajo se oculta el mayor depredador que el mundo ha conocido, uno cuya presa son los seres humanos.
A través de los siglos, el vampiro ha sobrevivido mimetizándose en la sociedad humana. Ahora es profesor de antropología, lo que resulta irónico dadas sus costumbres alimenticias...
Pero Weyland no es el monstruo que cae víctima de sus sentimientos humanos. Es el monstruo que perdura. Y hará todo cuanto esté en su mano para protegerse a sí mismo y su modo de vida.

In this age of the twinkling, bubble-gum card vampire, Suzy McKee Charnas’ [The Vampire Tapestry] surpasses Stoker, the master and father of all vampire lore, delivering an ever-hungry animal, but one conflicted in a singularly human way.

Dr. Edward Lewis Weyland is a vampire who sees the humans around him as little more than cattle on which to feed and sustain his solitary existence. A notable anthropologist, Weyland conducts a study of sleep patterns and dreams at the Cayslin College Center for the Study of Man, nightly feeding on the life-blood of the student test subjects. When he targets the recently widowed Katje de Groot, he finds that her demure façade conceals the heart of a huntress. Having recognized Weyland’s predatory nature, Katje is prepared when the animal tries to run her to ground and she coolly shoots him. Weyland flees the campus only to be captured and imprisoned in a New York City apartment, held against his will as a carnival side-show type attraction. Mark, the adolescent nephew of his captor, sees more than just an animal in a cage and frees the vampire before he can be killed in a cult-like ritual. Free and physically healed, Weyland is reluctant to give up the anthropologist professor identity that allows him easy feeding opportunities and a measure of notoriety. To rehabilitate his name and reputation, the creature submits to psycho-therapy, claiming to be under the delusion of being a vampire. During weekly sessions with Dr. Floria Landeur, as Weyland honestly describes his life as a vampire, hoping to lend an air of credibility to the idea of his delusion, the therapist intuits the truth. Weyland coerces a letter of good mental health from the doctor and reestablishes himself at a southwestern college. But Weyland cannot regain his unfeeling predation, finding himself more and more affected with the emotions and experiences of those he counted as mere cattle.

Charnas tells over half of the creature’s story through the eyes of three of his potential victims Each sees something different in Weyland, and, in turn, finds something in themselves. Katje, the meek widowed professor’s wife, recognizes the spirit of a kindred predator in Weyland. Shooting him quickens in Katje a fierce zest for life learned from a childhood spent hunting big game in the African bush. Mark, the child of a bitter and broken home, identifies with the captive Weyland, seeing his own manipulated and trapped existence in the vampire’s predicament. In freeing the animal, Mark frees himself from blind obedience to the undeserving adults in his life. Floria, a therapist who has largely lost her way, finds in Weyland a similarly bruised and dull psyche. In awakening the vampire’s buried humanity, the therapist awakens her own, breaking through to a world of emotion and feeling she’d long thought lost. Weyland, the consummate Machiavellian, expertly plays the roles each of these humans expect of him, gaining exactly what he needs to survive. Though when the narrative resumes from the vampire’s perspective, it becomes clear that Weyland has been feeding on more than just his victim’s blood.

Charnas constructs the most unique and well-reasoned physiology and psychology for the vampire since Stoker first put his mark on the legend. In shaping the creature, Charnas used none of the Candyland-type fantasy, so popular of late, that has made everyone want either to be a vampire or to date one. She also shied away from the zombie-type mentality that completely de-humanizes the vampire from the start, often to the point of losing the point of the legend. With Weyland, Charnas has returned to the theme of isolation and lost humanity so prevalent in any good creature story, and that makes Shelley’s [Frankenstein] so poignant. In this case, Weyland has so embraced his unique place in the world that he isolates himself as superior to the human cattle on which he preys, looking down his nose at any experience he equates with humanity. What the creature in [Frankenstein] longs for, Weyland has buried, choosing to ignore his humanity as too painful to carry from century to century and too dangerous for a true predator to indulge.

I had high hopes for this novel, as it is from a local author, and I wasn’t disappointed. This makes my short list of All-Time Favorites.

5 bones!!!!! ( )

Nokkuð öðruvísi vampírusaga en maður á að venjast. Við fylgjumst með blóðsugu sem reynir að lifa á meðal manna sem sníkjudýr. Taka nóga næringu til að lifa af en ekki svo að eftir honum verði tekið auk þess sem hann þarf reglulega að búa til nýja persónu og bakgrunn til að komast af. Tilnefnd til þó nokkurra verðlauna þegar hún kom út 1981. ( )

Not going to rate, because I didn't finish it.

I bought this because it had made a couple of "best of" lists for vampire stories. And it also came highly recommended.

But my god. Almost a third of the way in...and...nothing...is...happening.

I'm out.

This novel was an entirely serendipitous discovery in college and a completely unexpected pleasure! A subtle, low-key, and insinuating panacea to both classic and "tween" vampire novels. ( )