The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires – Grady Hendrix

Despite the fact that I am still recovering from the trauma of reading My Best Friend’s Exorcism (that poor dog!), I decided to keep the faith with Grady Hendrix and give another one of his books a go. The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires isn’t a sequel per se, but it is another book set in the same universe of sorts (Charleston, South Carolina, circa 1990s). This time, Hendrix tells a scary supernatural tale from the point of view of the parents, rather than the teenagers.

The story kicks off when a group of maverick suburban housewives abandon the Literary Guild of Mt Pleasant (none of them have time to read the boring classics prescribed by the domineering founder) and form their own book club – one where they read trashy true crime and pulpy horror fiction. It’s really the only source of fun and joy in Patricia Campbell’s life; she spends the rest of her time caring for her elderly mother-in-law, trying to coax a smile out of her moody teenagers, and cooking dinner for her workaholic husband.

Patricia finds herself wishing there was some danger and excitement in her real life, not just on the page. She gets more than she bargained for when she meets her newly-deceased neighbour’s nephew, James. He’s dashing and clever and ever-so-charming – but Patricia starts to suspect that there’s something dark lurking beneath his good looks and charisma.

She’s spot on, of course. James is a vampire, preying on children. If only someone – anyone – would believe her.

Hendrix positions The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires as a book about women burdened by their responsibilities to others, versus a man who is only responsible to his own appetites and desires. I see it also as a story about the power of women working together, in ways big and small – whether it’s checking up on an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, or helping her hide the body of the vampire she just decapitated.

Hendrix directly addresses both race and gender in a way that’s pleasantly confronting (over and above the stomach-churning horror that he writes so well). The vampire initially targets the children of Black women in poorer communities, clearly figuring that no one would miss them or pick up on the fact that something is wrong. He doesn’t reckon on the interconnectedness of motherhood; even though the Black women are the employees of the white women of the book club, and the relationship is complex with power imbalances, the fact remains that they are all mothers who care deeply about the fates of all children. The white women, even in their position of relative privilege, face horrific mistreatment at the hands of their husbands, and are dismissed as silly and hysterical when they try to draw the men’s attention to the real and present danger in their neighbourhoods.

So, if it’s not already clear: even though Hendrix styles The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires as a horror-comedy, as he has done with his other novels, it’s actually a novel of surprising depth and insight. That’s not to say it’s not scary or gruesome. Hendrix loves a creepy rodent-related scene – this book has two, and they’re both deeply disturbing (if you’ve read Horrorstor, you’ll have a good idea of what you’re in for). The ending also isn’t neat, and the resolution comes at a cost for the characters involved. So, if you’re up for a complex, horrifying read with comedic elements, this is the book for you.

P.S. (with minor spoilers): the dog in this one, a cocker spaniel named Ragtag, faces needlessly gory trials and tribulations… but eventually dies a sweet and painless natural death at the very end of The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires. I still cried, of course, but I wasn’t anywhere near as traumatised. Hendrix is headed in the right direction on that front.

Read The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires:

• “Patricia is annoying. Friending the “vampire” seemed a bizarre reaction to getting her earlobe bitten off.” – DeeLynnQuint
• “Everyone in the reviews said this was a scary creepy book and what I read was some stuck up housewives with a not so there book club and a perv vampire only attacking young black children.” – Kenya Laughlin
• “Looking at Hendrix’s other books he appears to write about women a lot. Maybe he should take a break.” – Lindsay B
• “This is a book for anyone who watched ‘Buffy’ and thought “I wish this show didn’t have any heroes, but just focused on the petty, awful adults who tried to pretend there was nothing wrong in town and gaslit anyone who tried to point out the monsters.” Which is okay as a horror novel premise, but calling this a “charming testament to friendship” is like calling a dumpster fire an EDM festival.
  
  I gave up 3/4 of the way in, so there is still a mild chance the main character wakes up out of her fog and realizes she is surrounded by awful, irredeemable people, goes on a roaring rampage of revenge at how she’s been mistreated, burns the entire horrible neighborhood down and ends up starting a new happy life designing carnival floats in Rio . I don’t have the time or strength to find out. Each chapter has been like being hit with a sock full of sand.” B. Rust