A Review of Grady Hendrix’s Kirkus-Starred Novel
You probably already know that this year I read a number of vampire novels. One of these is The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. In a recent post—here—I mentioned that it was (by far!) my favorite of the vampire novels. The title intrigued me with its mixture of Southern Gothic and humor. However, I didn’t expect it to be as good as it is. It blew me away. Let’s take a spoiler-free look at why this tale is such a wildly successful blend of southern gothic and vampires!
Summary
Grady Hendrix said that in this story he wanted to pit Dracula against his mom. The novel takes place in the late 1980s in an upper-class area of Charleston in which the homes bear the history of the region and the women work at home, keeping their families, the region and the country running smoothly on the backs of their unseen labor. It’s a story of housewives pitted against evil.
The main character, Patricia, attends a true-crime book club in which the women read about serial killers and discuss how murders were and should have been accomplished. But when a newcomer, James, comes to town, the book club faces the kind of evil they never expected off the page. Worse, this man tests their loyalties to each other and the strength of their families. In the end, there’s blood. Lots of blood.
Kirkus
For his work, Hendrix earned a positive Kirkus review, one of the most prestigious reviews in the world. Not only that. He received a starred review, the highest Kirkus honor.
It’s a gold stamp in the literary world. It tells everyone in the industry that this is a stellar novel. We might expect that from any number of literary works, but this is solidly genre fiction, something to which you and I can aspire.
Genre-Consistent
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires falls within the Southern Gothic subgenre, a category with a long history and certain reader expectations. For a refresher on this genre, check out my post, The Southern Gothic Subgenre. That’s not to say that there isn’t room for genre-bending…we’ll get to Hendrix’s unique approach below. However, a genre writer should aim to deliver at least some of the things that the genre’s readers want to see.
Hendrix included a number of classic Southern Gothic references in very subtle ways such as the following.
- Old South vs. New South – the contrast between the the demure, old homes of the Charleston residents and the new monstrosity that James builds (and between those residents and James himself)
- Repression – the clear differences between the white and black characters’ lives whether they be resources or the response times and involvement (even interest) of law enforcement
- Violence – the American obsession with violence in the book club’s focus on the worst crimes and the most heinous offenders
In all of these things, the book rings true to the genre.
Unique & Socially Relevant
And yet Hendrix approaches Southern Gothic writing in a fresh and relevant way. For instance, he uses dark humor, which is relatively unheard of in Gothic writing. At times it’s laugh-out-loud funny, but still maintains an atmosphere of anxiety.
He also features a vampire, as the title suggests, but alters the manner in which the vampire hunts from his literary predecessors. In a sense the vampire doesn’t bite his victims (although he certainly does something that I’ll leave for you to find). He also doesn’t technically kill them, although they die.
Through his unique approach, Hendrix raises questions about many social issues such as pedophilia, racial oppression and the nature of suicide.
Tension & Pacing
Hendrix also masterfully evokes moments of extreme tension. He lays on the heat…raises it…raises it some more…and raises it further. When another author would quit, he continues on and it works. At some points in the book, readers will be entirely convinced that there is absolutely no way out.
And yet the novel features a number of very interesting character moments. He leaves space for those and works them into the plot in such a way that the pacing is flawless and the balance of plot and character is perfectly executed.
Character Voices
Many of these moments come out through his use of dialogue. For a fairly typical size book (400 pages or so) chock-full of action, there are many character voices and they’re each startlingly unique. When I started reading it, one of the first things I noticed is that he writes his characters so well that he could omit the dialogue tags and the reader would still know whether James, or Patricia, or Grace, or Carter is speaking.
He uses those voices. Within them, he says so much about the generation of 1980s housewives who bridged the past full of southern history and the borderless global future which threatens to blur the definition of every culture.
My favorite character is Grace Cavanaugh, the most rigidly southern of all of the women. Her manners are flawless, her speech artfully laced with subtext, and her home impeccably kept. She’s the one who, in one of Patricia’s moments of extreme duress, not knowing how to face down the monster, tells her:
“Vacuum your curtains,” Grace said. “No one ever does it enough. I promise it’ll make you feel better.”
P. 156
As simplistic and humorous as this seems, it speaks volumes about the southern tendency to maintain appearances over all else. Of course much in Grace’s life isn’t what it appears to be. This parallels southern Gothic writing in which the romanticized south is pitted against its troubling history.
Conclusion
This book has it all: relevant themes, a a unique approach to a genre-specific style, fantastic pacing and tension, and larger-than-life characters. It’s no wonder that Kirkus gave him a starred review.
It may seem like a stretch to you or I, but Hendrix is a wonderful reminder that those of us who write genre fiction can still do so in such a way that it’s worthy of the highest honors.
Let me know if you’ve read The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and what you liked about it!
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