“And then there was blessed silence. I swam in the darkness and there was nothing, no sound to injure me. Not even my heartbeat.” – Simon Doyle, This is Not A Vampire Story
SIMON Doyle’s This is Not a Vampire Story is a novel that transcends genre expectations while still embracing the emotional and aesthetic traditions of Gothic literature. Despite its provocative title, the book does engage with the vampire mythos, not through horror or bloodlust, but by exploring themes of queer desire, memory, and loss.
Victor Callahan is a vampire trapped in the form of a seventeen-year-old. Rather than a figure of terror, he becomes a vessel for quiet reflection. The story unfolds as a restrained and intimate exploration of love—both hidden and openly expressed, romantic and platonic—of grief that lingers beyond time, and of identities shaped by repression, secrecy, and longing.
The pairing of queerness and Gothic has long literary roots. From Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla to Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, the vampire has often functioned as a metaphor for otherness, forbidden desire, and queer identity. In This is Not a Vampire Story, Doyle draws on this tradition. However, instead of emphasizing the monstrous or eroticized aspects of the vampire, he uses Victor’s immortality as a metaphor for queer loneliness and the enduring trauma of lost love.
Set partly in mid-century (1949 onward) Ireland, a time and place marked by the criminalization and
stigma of homosexuality, the novel chronicles Victor’s relationship with James O’Carroll, a mortal. Their love exists under constant threat, hidden from society, and is ultimately shattered by forces beyond their control. The tragedy of their separation isn’t just a romantic loss; it becomes a symbol of the many queer love stories throughout history that were silenced or erased.
[For more on this topic, check out Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850s to 1950s by Hugh Nini & Neal Treadwell (Oct 2020)]
This is Not a Vampire Story is told in first-person. Structurally, it alternates between past and present, with Victor now living at Lakeshore Manor, an elder care facility in 2018. These alternating timelines serve to emphasize how the past continues to haunt the present, not just for Victor, but also for the people around him. In classic Gothic fashion, time does not move cleanly forward. Instead, it loops and bleeds into itself. The present is filled with ghosts of the past—not literal ones, but the lingering effects of love, regret, and secrets.
Victor cannot forget James, nor can he live fully in the present. His immortality becomes a prolonged grief, an extended metaphor for the queer experience of living with memory in a society that has demanded forgetting.
Doyle’s approach to the Gothic is subtle; it’s Gothic without gore. He builds atmosphere through tone, setting, and emotional weight. The coastal Irish landscape is windswept and lonely. The interiors of Lakeshore Manor are quiet, filled with shadows and empty corridors. Characters whisper more than they shout. The horror here is far more internal than external, rooted in memory and repression rather than outside threats of blood lust and supernatural savagery.
This emotional restraint regarding overt supernatural elements enables Doyle to concentrate on character development and thematic depth. The novel particularly explores how queer individuals experience time, conceal love, preserve memory, and how trauma, once experienced, stubbornly lingers. The Gothic tradition’s intrigue with secrets, madness, and the uncanny is redirected to focus on queer inner experiences.
What makes Doyle’s novel especially compelling is that it treats queerness not merely as a romantic subplot, but as a lens through which to explore human relationships more broadly. Secondary characters, particularly Gloria, a night nurse with her own complicated past, and James’ now-elderly friends, are given space to reflect on their relationships, losses, and moral failures.
By positioning Victor in a care home, Doyle also touches on a theme rarely addressed in vampire fiction: queer aging. Though Victor’s body does not age, the world around him does. His queerness, like his vampirism, separates him from others, especially in a space designed for those nearing the end of (human) life. Here, Doyle seems to ask: What does it mean to outlive the person or people you love? What does it mean to remember what others have forgotten or were never allowed to know?
Though its title states otherwise, This is Not a Vampire Story is very much a
vampire story, one told through a queer, Gothic, and profoundly human lens. Well, perhaps that statement is somewhat misleading. This novel is a story about immortality/agelessness and its complex, beautiful and tragic relationship to mortality seen through the eyes of a vampire.
Doyle has crafted a novel that uses the conventions of the Gothic not for shock or spectacle, but for emotional truth. His creations do not dazzle; they grieve. They do not stalk; they remember. In doing so, Doyle aligns the vampire not with monstrosity, but with the enduring ache of a (queer) love that must be hidden, protected, and finally mourned.
Maybe the true monster is not the vampire, but time itself.
Simon Doyle’s This is Not a Vampire Story is not a horror novel. It’s a quiet, poetic narrative of reflection, a love letter to memory, if you will; it’s a compassionate meditation on how the past (inevitably?) shapes who we are. An evocative, poignant work, Mr. Doyle.
Lastly, I’m completely obsessed with the one cover: the haunting moon, the moody blue/black colouring, the ship (a nod to Bram Stoker’s “The Demeter” from Dracula), and the near-glowing Gothic script. I want this as a poster.
This is Not A Vampire Story is available for purchase at indigo, amazon.ca, and amazon.com.
For more information about this author, follow Simon Doyle on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, or visit his Website.
