31. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

I was very excited about this book.  It may be the first book I have ever pre-ordered, which I did from the lovely Argo Bookshop in downtown Montreal who hand-delivered it to my home because pandemic.  I first experienced Grady Hendrix when he was one of the organizers of the New York Asian Film Festival way back in the day when it was first starting.  I'm sure he did a ton of work behind the scenes (and I know he took my tickets once or twice), but he was best known for his over the top intros before the movies.  Now I took my Hong Kong movies nerd-serious back then and so his emphasis on the wackiness of the movies didn't totally sit right with me, but I had to admire his knowledge and recognize that his enthusiasm was genuine not mocking.  I lost track of him until Paperbacks from Hell came  out, where I started to follow his newsletter, which is fucking hilarious (you can sign up for it here).  I hope he keeps doing them because they bring me great joy, especially during this pandemic, where he is really shining.  So a long preamble to say I was happy to help support his pre-sales and looking forward to reading the book. 

Horror is not really my jam, but groups of non-standard heroes fighting evil is so this book held a lot of promise for me. I was not disappointed.  It's a solid book, quite horrifying at times and honestly moving at the end.  At one point, I got so upset with one of the characters that I had to put the book down and chill out.  This is not necessarily a book you want to read just before going to bed.  The world-building and the innovative and subtle yet complex history of the monster adds a rich depth that also makes the book satisfying.  I found some of the side characters to lack development (I wished that we had a bit more insight into Tilly, who seemed to change from wacky fun person to weirdly conservative), but this is a minor quibble.  The ending lacked a truly satisfying get back at the assholes feeling but that is a question of style than a critique.  I feel like Hendrix kept with a more realistic and thus less easy ending, but I would have enjoyed a bit more simplistic comeuppance for the dick husbands.

The hero of the story is Patricia Campbell, good wife and mother but a bit lost about who she is and what she wants.  Early on, she joins an alternate book club with the less serious wives in town and instead of reading pseudo-intellectual literature they go right into the true crime genre. One of them who is a devout Christian lies to her husband that it is bible study.  The book club is a through line, but much more of the story is about Patricia's tenuous hold on her marriage and her family, which really starts to fall apart as strange but handsome James Harris moves in to his great-aunt's house next door.  Shit gets weird and then gruesome real fast when Patricia stumbles across the great-aunt eating a racoon in her backyard.  This is where I knew we were going to be in good territory.  Hendrix does not pull any punches and it is really fucking gross.  And gets grosser at parts.  This is horror.  Another element that also develops early on is the mythology of the south and the supernatural.  At first, it comes through Patricia's mother-in-law, who lives with them and suffers from dementia.  It's all really engrossing.

I won't go into any more plot details because if you enjoy any of these elements, than you should just read the book.  I will say that there is further depth that elevates this book beyond just a good horror story.  The subtext here is privilege and how the evil impacts you worse the less privileged you are.  Hendrix portrays the husbands, at the privilege pinnacle, scathingly.  You just fucking hate them, especially Patricia's husband.  I almost want an epilogue where terrible shit happens to him as he is exposed to his own ignorance.  The white women's blindness to the situation of Mrs. Greene, who "does" for them is equally exposed.  

One other thing is that as a physical artifact, the hardcover of this book is really beautiful.  When you take off the slipcover, the cover is a sherbert green and the inside a lovely orange, which reflect the peach and leaves on the cover. It also has an embossed faux library seal.  Very well done, publisher and designers!