The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix
From the preface:
With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires both is and isn't what the title and cover suggest. It's often very funny, but it's also much, much darker and more serious than I expected. If you can think of a trigger warning, this book probably contains it, and it holds up a mirror to some real-life issues in ways that I found viscerally enraging. (Not at the book, at RL racism, sexism, etc.) It's a fun, funny, compelling, scary, and redemptive book, and the one which conclusively broke my reading block by making me devour it in a pair of gulps. But it's not fluff.
Five White Southern women form a book club devoted to trashy true crime, which does and doesn't prepare them for James Harris, the supernatural serial killer who insinuates himself into their lives. Patricia, the narrator and main character, is the first to be chosen and damaged by him; her fight to save herself and her children widens and pulls in some unexpected allies, as well as James Harris's own and far more powerful allies. And I'm not talking about other vampires...
The women of the club, and some other women who are not in the club but are also part of the fight, are incredibly real characters. They're flawed in ways that aren't cute quirks, but are both personal shortcomings and ways in which they actively participate in the systems of injustice that are baked into American society. White women participate in racism, Black women participate in classism, and everyone moves to protect their own families at the price of others' lives (and sometimes their own). But they're also funny and kind and heroic. Sometimes I wanted to scream at them, and by the end of the book I was cheering for them.
Taken just as a horror novel, it's a very effective and satisfying one. There are scenes which are incredibly scary, scenes which are viscerally horrifying, and plenty of dark comedy. It's hard to find a different take on vampires, but this one partakes of both satisfying old tropes and some extremely creepy new ones.
Vampires are always metaphors. They may represent the kind of raw sexual desire that drives people to throw away everything they value for a single touch, or a breaking with tradition and embrace of a different way of life, or the fear of one's own desires.
James Harris isn't that kind of vampire.
( Spoilers )
I definitely want to read more by Hendrix.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires[image error]
[image error] [image error]
comments
With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires both is and isn't what the title and cover suggest. It's often very funny, but it's also much, much darker and more serious than I expected. If you can think of a trigger warning, this book probably contains it, and it holds up a mirror to some real-life issues in ways that I found viscerally enraging. (Not at the book, at RL racism, sexism, etc.) It's a fun, funny, compelling, scary, and redemptive book, and the one which conclusively broke my reading block by making me devour it in a pair of gulps. But it's not fluff.
Five White Southern women form a book club devoted to trashy true crime, which does and doesn't prepare them for James Harris, the supernatural serial killer who insinuates himself into their lives. Patricia, the narrator and main character, is the first to be chosen and damaged by him; her fight to save herself and her children widens and pulls in some unexpected allies, as well as James Harris's own and far more powerful allies. And I'm not talking about other vampires...
The women of the club, and some other women who are not in the club but are also part of the fight, are incredibly real characters. They're flawed in ways that aren't cute quirks, but are both personal shortcomings and ways in which they actively participate in the systems of injustice that are baked into American society. White women participate in racism, Black women participate in classism, and everyone moves to protect their own families at the price of others' lives (and sometimes their own). But they're also funny and kind and heroic. Sometimes I wanted to scream at them, and by the end of the book I was cheering for them.
Taken just as a horror novel, it's a very effective and satisfying one. There are scenes which are incredibly scary, scenes which are viscerally horrifying, and plenty of dark comedy. It's hard to find a different take on vampires, but this one partakes of both satisfying old tropes and some extremely creepy new ones.
Vampires are always metaphors. They may represent the kind of raw sexual desire that drives people to throw away everything they value for a single touch, or a breaking with tradition and embrace of a different way of life, or the fear of one's own desires.
James Harris isn't that kind of vampire.
( Spoilers )
I definitely want to read more by Hendrix.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires[image error]
[image error] [image error]
comments
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