Rushdie retorted to much of the criticism by calling it the "culture of denigration." He has called Billson "a superb satirist whose vision of a Britain taken over by vampires . . . is the wittiest and sharpest of all the attempts to find metaphors of the '80s."
In one scene in "Suckers," Dora Vale visits a popular night spot called Bar Nouveau, where pallid looking twentysomethings who work in publishing gather to drink Bloody Marys. When an unsuspecting student tourist walks in, a tall woman with curly black hair approaches him for what is his last pick up. Dora watches in horror.
"Her fingernails flashed scarlet. I thought this was a piece of theatre, just for show, until I saw the broad gout of crimson gushing in stops and starts from his ruptured throat.
"There was a loud communal aaahhh, the sort of noise one associates with a packed cinema audience getting a glimpse of cute babies and animals, and they were all over him, clustering around in a panic, jostling, trying to position their open mouths beneath the drinking fountain. The student sank beneath their onslaught without another word. . . . It was over as suddenly as it had begun. One minute, mayhem. The next, customers were wiping their small, neat mouths and returning to their chairs and smoothing their hair down and chatting and smoking and retouching lipgloss, raising halves of Special as though nothing had happened, though here and there one could still see a fine red stipple on their dead white flesh."
However difficult her metamorphosis from journalist to author, Billson at least has the critics talking. And how does a reviewer respond to reviews?
The praise, particularly the high praise from Rushdie, helps to balance the nasty reviews. As a critic herself, she cannot ignore them completely, but prefers a more diplomatic approach in her own writing.
"I try to write criticism that stands on its own, that in itself is a good read, that will give information about what I'm reviewing to the reader, which will enable them to make up their own mind about whether they want to go out and see a film or go out and buy a book, whether or not I like it."