BOOK REVIEW / Promiscuity sucks: Where does kissing end? - Kate Pullinger: Serpent's Tail, pounds 7.99

THIS is a sexy ghost story which never spells out (as the blurb does) that its heroine is a vampire. The only signs of abnormality in Mina Savage - apart from nymphomaniac tendencies and a quasi-incestuous (unconsummated) relationship with her father, Harry - are her blackouts, nocturnal disappearances (leaving open windows and a smell of newly turned earth), and her capacity to hospitalise a sated lover by leaving him with a low blood count.

Fortunately, until she meets a nice Jewish boy, Stephen Smith, Mina's affairs haven't lasted long enough to leave her partners dangerously drained. Her desire for sexual gratification without sacrificing her freedom seems to be inherited from Harry, a womaniser who wouldn't marry Mina's mother. Harry himself is the product of a fling behind the bacon slicer between a butcher and a customer (though Harry's mother later implies he was conceived by a divine visitation).

Harry appears undead in Mina's dreams, which raises a question. Is Mina not only the illegitimate daughter of an illegitimate father, but also the vampiric daughter of a vampiric father? But the book won't quite let you take literally the idea of Mina (or her dad) as a vampire. The notion seems to be a metaphor, about those who suck energy from their lovers. It's an old idea: Mina is Cleopatra to Stephen's Antony. And her feeling for him is an old-fashioned addiction, if somewhat sadistic: 'Mina does not want to hurt Stephen. She knows he does not really want to be hurt. But there is something in the way he holds his body when he speaks that makes Mina think she can do anything to him.'

Pullinger's story of this destructive affair contains lots of graphic coupling, spiced up with a bit of bondage and much biting of nipples. But the best parts are the funny and perceptive passages of family history. The moral is unexpectedly conventional: boys must 'beware insatiable women', and girls should learn that 'happiness is settling down'. Or, to sum up another way: even vampires prefer monogamy.