The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires / Grady Hendrix

 

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the foreword, this author says, “With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites [a vampire] against women whose lives are shaped by their responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom. As you'll see, it's not a fair fight.”

But it takes a while. Especially when the vampire arrives in town with money and seems to be willing to spread the wealth by investing in the local economy. He says to Patricia at one point, “I moved here because you people are all so stupid. You'll take anyone at face value as long as he's white and has money." And the men are totally bamboozled. It's the wives who see what's going on, but the old, experienced vampire knows how to turn the husbands against the wives and the women retreat for fear of losing their marriages, their reputations, and, in Patricia's case, her freedom when her husband threatens to institutionalize her.

But they don't suffer the worst of the situation. That is the fate of the black community just outside the town limits, where children are going missing, are committing suicide, or are being murdered. It's not reported in the newspaper and pretty much ignored by the police, because apparently they are expendable. The book club ladies back off when first threatened, but when James Harris comes after their children, something must be done.

What to you do when you are faced with folklore, a being that your community isn't going to believe in? You do it yourself, of course. All my life, I've watched women wade into problems that they don't really know how to solve, but with the determination to fix things. And they very rarely fail completely.

Even in this day and age, most women are going to recognize the male behaviour in this book. All I have to do is look at the sneering, disrespectful way that women are treated in politics and all of the threats and abuse that they must wade through as they do their jobs. White men are so used to being the ones in charge and to having their wives being their support system, that they just assume it is their due. Male entitlement writ large.

This book could have been all about James Harris, but I appreciated that Hendrix centred the story around the women. As one of the women observes when the book club becomes co-ed, the men sure like to hear themselves talk. But it is the women who take action. You go, girl!


View all my reviews