My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

Parents Just Don’t Understand

One thing people say to me after reading this book is, “Gretchen’s parents are horrible.” And they’re right, because this book is written from a teenaged point of view and when you’re a teenager your parents are horrible. But there’s another version of this story, one from the Lang’s perspective, and it’s about their daughter, and something’s seriously wrong with her, and every time she sees her best friend it gets worse, and they don’t know what to do, and no one can help them, and they are terrified out of their minds. As a parent, you have one job: keep your kid safe. Of course you want them to get into a good school and not belch at the table, but really the job boils down to: keep them breathing. And that’s harder than it seems. As I got to know my parents as adults, I knew I had to tell a story like this but from their point of view because as annoying as I found them growing up, they kept me from getting killed in any number of ways (see, Fireworks War). So I’ve written a book that comes out this year called The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. It’s set in this neighborhood (it’s where I grew up) and it’s set a few years later in the early Nineties (it’s when I grew up) and although none of the same characters appear, it’s a spiritual sequel to My Best Friend’s Exorcism, only instead of being about teenaged friendship it’s about adult friendship and that turns out to be a very different thing.