The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel

Product Information

Obnoxious In-Laws: Patricia's brothers-in-law and her husband were supposed to take turns watching the senile Miss Mary, but when Caleb takes the first visit, they refuse to take her, meaning Patricia has to take care of her full time, and her senility makes her very rude and difficult to deal with. Later subverted with Miss Mary, who gives Patricia a warning from beyond the grave and watches over her after they finally defeat James. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires” by Grady Hendrix is one hell of a ride. I’ve read Hendrix before and also enjoyed “The Final Girl Support Group” very much as his writing style, character development, plot twists, and all the creepy/scary situations are done very well. Southern Gothic literature set out to expose the myth of old antebellum South, and its narrative of an idyllic past hidden by social, familial, and racial denials and suppressions.-the Wikipedia entry that I googled to make sure I didnt misremember my lit education. It describes this book to a T. I have been a fan of Grady since Horrorstor and was really looking forward to this one, but it's just not very good.

It's the early-1990s and in their conservative neighborhood, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina, it sounds better to say their Club is a Bible Study. So, that's exactly what they say. The next section is dated August of 1993 and is titled “Psycho.” The women attempt to go to the police, but their husbands stop them because they are working on a housing development project in Six Mile with James. The husbands make their wives apologize to James for starting rumors. James accepts their apology and suggests he join book club permanently so they will realize they have nothing to fear from him. The women agree, but Patricia is devastated that no one believes her. She tries to kill herself by taking all of the Prozac that her husband gave her. When she wakes up in the hospital, he tells her he will take the children away from her if she does not decide to give up on her conspiracy theory. Patricia Campbell gave up her career as a nurse, to be stay at home Mother raising her two children with a distant husband. Her book club was her one escape. It was a place where she could indulge her love to true crime and suspenseful fiction. Fried Green Tomatoesand Steel Magnoliasmeet Draculain this horror novel set in 1990s suburban Charleston And I get that a lot of this book is supposed to be satire. Satire can be a wonderful tool to expose and criticize things like misogyny, racism, and sexism but I didn't feel that Hendrix was being critical with these characters or with this story all all. Instead, he put all of these things on display and just leaves them hanging there for us to gawk at. And yeah, ok fine. BUT... can satire truly be effective when it doesn't challenge and, instead, perpetuates the awfully negative stereotypes it is supposed to contradict?Several of these women have a little book club where they alternate real life true crime (the higher the body count the better) and thriller fiction that can only hope to match the real life crime stories. So when Patricia begins to suspect something very wrong about a handsome newcomer to their community, her husband, his friends and even her book club members think that it's her imagination running wild, after all the real and fictional crimes she has been reading about with the book club. But, Patricia is really on to something with her suspicions about this newcomer. He IS a thing of fiction, come to life, and he is consuming and preying on the young and old of the area, with no one but Patricia thinking he is anything but a financial savior for their little community.

I started this book expecting it to be a light read and found myself drawn into a Southern Gothic tale that spent as much time on the horror of familial relationships as it did on the horror of a predator feasting on a vulnerable community. i love how committed grady hendrix is to design. and details. please admire this underthecover stamp:After reading The Final Girl and liking but not loving it, I kept hearing that this book was a favorite among Hendrix's fans. The Gracious Cay development that James sponsors in the Six Mile neighborhood is a case of Villainous Gentrification as plain as day, once again exploiting poor people who society won't miss. Child Eater: James Harris feeds off children by using a tentacle appendage to drain their blood. Harris requires this to rejuvenate himself and cares nothing about what it does to his victims, who are driven to kill themselves due to the effects it has on their minds. It's implied near the end of the book that Harris doesn't need to feed off children exclusively to survive, he just likes doing it because he's a sadist. Lastly, there are glaring stereotypes in this story. Cultural overtones of the South with racially separated communities. Sexist households where the husband is the breadwinner and the wife is subservient. And this book had the dumbest, most slow-witted characters I have ever read. When presented with evidence of something strange going on, they just refused to believe, over and over. Sure, in real life, if someone told me there's a vampire loose and they had evidence, I would be skeptical. But this is fiction! I don't want to spent 80% of the book reading about non-believers doubting and naysaying. What a downer.