Book Review: “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” by Grady Hendrix

Oct 6

Håfa adai and welcome to spooky season, my favorite month of the year! Throughout October 2024, I will publish reviews for works of horror, suspense, and the supernatural. Each book review will be followed by a brief history of Halloween. My second spooky pick for the month is The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix.

This book review consists of two parts: a spoiler-free plot summary and my thoughts on the story. In the second part, I give my personal rating and break down the setting and worldbuilding, storytelling, cast of characters, and themes. There may be some lightweight spoilers—such as how characters interact with each other and the world around them—but I will not give away any major plot twists or endings. I want to share my opinions of the book and maybe encourage you to purchase a copy of your own.

Click on the tags at the bottom of this post to see all reviews with the same tags in the Horror bookshelf.

Spoiler-Free Plot Summary

Patricia Campbell’s world is quite small. She is a housewife. Her husband Carter spends most of his time at work. Her two kids, Korey and Blue, are teenagers now and no longer want to spend time with their mother. She has been tasked with taking care of her mother-in-law who is declining from Alzheimer’s disease. Her to-do list somehow only ever gets longer and longer. And she should have been looking forward to presenting this month’s book club selection at the upcoming meeting, but she forgot to read the book.

Patricia needs a change. No more stiff book club with rigid rules. She’s forming a new book club with some friends that focuses solely on murder mysteries. Perhaps this is what she needed! Then one night after book club, she is violently attacked by her elderly neighbor. It’s one thing to read about attacks in a novel, but no one wants that to happen in real life. Right? But the changes around her only get more bizarre and unexplainable once James Harris, the nephew of her elderly assailant, shows up in the neighborhood.

Important Trigger Warning for The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

Scenes where the vampire “feeds” on victims entail sexual assault. Additionally, Chapter 33 centers the retelling of sexual assault experienced by one of the characters. These scenes are not essential to the plot. You can skip these scenes as well as all of Chapter 33. If you do choose to read or listen through them, and if these would cause you distress or discomfort in any way, then please make sure to take necessary steps to prepare and protect yourself before and after reading this book.

My Thoughts on The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires: 2.5 stars

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires takes places in Charleston, South Carolina, during the early to mid 1990s, in the same “universe” as the characters in Grady Hendrix’s 2016 book My Best Friend’s Exorcism. But the dynamic between the characters and their environment gives the impression that the setting is more akin to the 1950s than the 1990s. And although there is such a thing as giving too much background or explanation, I would have liked to know a bit more about the origins, history, and powers of the vampire. That being said, Grady Hendrix does provide vivid detail of the social reality Patricia Campbell and the other characters must walk through.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is told from a third-person perspective closely following the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of Patricia Campbell. The pacing of the story drew out the suspense while also creating anxiety. Considering that this book is classified as horror, I wonder how different the experience of reading or listening to it would have been if it was written from the first-person perspective of Patricia. Seeing the horror through Patricia’s eyes might have given a darker tone to the story’s themes.

Central themes to the unfolding plot are systems of racism and structures of misogyny. Would the press have cared if the missing and dying kids were White instead of Black? Would the police have taken the concerns seriously if they came from men in certain professions instead of from housewives in a book club? Absolutely yes! A great amount of the tension throughout the first and second act of the story is built within the characters’ respective and/or intersectional experiences with racism and misogyny. By the third act, these two themes take a slight backseat to the creation of a cult community. I felt that the cult theme was underdeveloped in earlier parts of the story so much so that it seems sort of silly by the time it comes to the forefront.

An additional part of the storytelling that I must point out relates to the trigger warning I provide above: the use of sexual assault as a plot device. In the context of this story, I felt that the use of sexual assault was grossly gratuitous. The way in which the vampire feeds on his victims could have been described in many other ways. The way in which a character was attacked (as retold in Chapter 33) could have happened in many other ways. These scenes and Chapter 33 cause me not to want to revisit this book.

The themes at the center of the plot give important commentary that continue to resonate today. However, I feel that the story may have been more immersive if it was told from the first-person perspective of Patricia. And I simply cannot get past sexual assault used as a plot device when many other methods would not have changed the overall story.

Patricia Campbell’s family consists of her psychiatrist husband Carter, two teenage kids (Blue and Korey), mother-in-law Mrs. Mary, and family dog Ragtag. Patricia hires Ursula Greene (Mrs. Greene) to help with the care of Mrs. Mary, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. The new book club includes fellow neighborhood housewives Grace, Slick, Kitty, and Maryellen. And then there’s James Harris.

I cannot relate to the choices Patricia and her book club make as they navigate the events going on around them. But I can understand that they are operating within the social rules they believe they have to follow. I can also understand Mrs. Greene’s shift from initial apprehension to total commitment to helping out the book club. The way Carter treats Patricia throughout the story is horrible. She is essentially gaslit by her husband from start to finish; which would have felt more intense if the story was written from Patricia’s first-person perspective. This makes the decision Patricia makes towards the end of the story quite satisfying.

At the start, we see James Harris as a mysterious and illusive figure. At the end, we see him as a charismatic and enigmatic cult leader; although the title “cult leader” is not actually assigned to him. He does not change simply because he has never had to. This is what leads to his rise and his fall. Some characters experience transformative growth by the end of the book, while others experience expansive growth. The dynamic between Patricia and the other characters is anxiety-inducing and causes stress as the story goes on. But this is a horror story, after all.

My overall rating for Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is 2.5 out of 5 stars. I have very mixed feelings about The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. On the one hand, the concept is very interesting, there is an intense psychological thriller aspect to it, it presents important social commentary, and it was an enjoyable read for a good chunk of it. On the other hand, there is absolutely NO NEED for the use of sexual assault as a plot point in order for this story to have the same effect. I cannot recommend this book without giving the explicit trigger warning of how sexual assault is featured in the story. That is technically a big spoiler—and I know I try to keep my book reviews spoiler-free—but I do not like the idea of sharing my thoughts about this book without giving that away. So, would I recommend The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires? No, I would not. All of the interesting things that I enjoyed or appreciated about it were overshadowed by the unnecessary depictions of sexual assault.

Dångkulo' na' saina ma'åse'! Thank you so much for reading my review of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix.

A Brief History of Halloween

October is my absolute favorite month of the year for one reason: Halloween! From ancient traditions of honoring the dead to modern-day celebrations of all things horror, Halloween is a time to appreciate mortality, the supernatural, and the macabre. Let’s take a look at the origins of this holiday.

A Quick Definition of Terms

Many use the terms “Celtic” and “Gaelic” interchangeably, but Celtic and Gaelic are not one and the same. The Celtic people (or Celts) include Indo-European communities spanning from western Europe to Anatolia (located in modern-day Turkey). The pronunciation of the word Celtic matters. If you say Celtic with a “k” sound at the beginning (“kell-tick”), you are referring to the groups of Indo-European peoples. If you say Celtics with an “s” sound at the beginning (“sell-ticks”), you are referring to the professional basketball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. The specific Celtic community discussed in this post are the Gaels. The Gaels are an ethnolinguistic group of Celtic people in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man who speak the Gaelic languages. In short, the Celts are a people and Gaelic is a language spoken by some Celtic peoples.

Samhain, the Celtic New Year & Harvest Festival

Samhain (pronounced “saw-win”) is an annual celebration held by the Celtic peoples of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man to signal the end of the harvest season and the first day of winter. Similar celebrations are held by many other Celtic peoples in Wales and western mainland Europe. Samhain is referenced in the earliest recorded pieces of Irish literature, dating to the 8th Century, and is identified as one of the most important events in Irish mythology. A version of the tale of Tochmarc Emire (“The Wooing of Emer”) written in the 10th Century identifies Samhain as the first of four festivals to mark the seasons of the year. Celtic peoples who celebrated Samhain would make bonfires, gives sacrifices, and practice divination using apples and nuts to predict the events of the upcoming year.

For the Celts, Samhain was a time when the boundaries between the world of the living and the Otherworld (where spirits and the dead remained) became blurred. This liminal time allowed aos sí (spirits and fairies, pronounced “eess shee”) to cross into the world of the living and move among us. Once crossed over, aos sí would wonder the world of the living, with the spirits of deceased people visiting their living family in search of hospitality. Celtic people would leave food and drink outside their doors as offerings to the wandering aos sí in exchange for good luck and greater chances of surviving the upcoming winter. Not leaving offerings for aos sí could incur their spite and cause bad luck for people and livestock alike.

Allhallowtide, the Christian Season of the Dead

By the 19th Century and early 20th Century, European scholars of anthropology recognized the connection between the Celtic and Christian roots of Halloween. These scholars noted that many cultures in Europe and Southeast Asia combined celebrations for the dead with what those cultures recognized to be the New Year. But there was an undeniably direct line between the Celtic tradition of Samhain and the Christian season of Allhallowtide, both celebrated at the same time of the year to honor the dead.

Christian monks stationed in England in the early 8th Century observed the Celtic tradition that honored the dead and celebrated the New Year at the end of every October. And celebrations that resembled Samhain were observed by Christians as far south as France. By the 9th Century, Pope Gregory IV urged Catholic leaders in western Europe to establish All Saints’ Day on 1 November and All Souls’ Day on 2 November in an apparent (albeit still contested) attempt to erase Samhain and all similar Celtic traditions in the region. The Christian triduum known as Allhallowtide is what came out of these alleged eradication efforts with All Hallows’ Eve (or Halloween) celebrated on 31 October, All Hallows’ Day (or All Saints’ Day) celebrated on 1 November, and All Souls’ Day celebrated on 2 November.

But the deeply rooted Celtic tradition of Samhain would not easily be removed. Up to the 19th Century in Ireland and the Isle of Man, many Gaelic-speaking communities still recognized Samhain as the time to honor the dead and bring in the New Year. Today, many Celtic communities as well as practicing Wiccans continue to keep the tradition of Samhain alive and well. The Mexican tradition of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is also celebrated during 1-2 November, possibly taking influence from Allhallowtide.

Halloween in American Popular Culture

The tradition of celebrating Halloween became widespread in the United States by the 19th Century with the mass immigration of Irish and Scottish populations to the country. By the early 20th Century, Halloween became adopted by Americans of all races and religions and has since spread to countries and communities around the world. Today, Halloween is widely recognized as “spooky season.” It is the time of year when film and literary genres of horror, suspense, and the supernatural are put on full display and enjoyed by their devoted fans around the world.

The traditional Celtic practices of Samhain do not look very different today than they did over a thousand years ago. The Samhain practice of leaving food and drink outside your door for wandering spirits turned into leaving candy for wandering trick-or-treaters. The divination practice of using apples and nuts to predict what the upcoming year had in store turned into bobbing for apples. Irish Catholic folktales like that of Jack-o’-lantern and Stingy Jack became tied to the celebration of Halloween and are signaled by carving faces into hallowed out pumpkins to ward off spirits. And the 16th-century practice of dressing in disguise to either impersonate a wandering spirit or cause mischief if you were unwelcomed turned into wearing costumes and trick-or-treating.

Closing Thoughts

An annual Celtic tradition known as Samhain honoring the dead and celebrating the New Year was practiced by Gaelic-speaking people in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man from the end of October to the beginning of November. For centuries, the Roman Catholic church allegedly attempted to eradicate this celebration before eventually Christianizing it. The Christianization of this Celtic tradition laid the social foundation for what would become Halloween. Today, Halloween is widely recognized and celebrated by people of all races and religions around the world.

Rating Cheat Sheet

4.75 - 5.00 stars: Everyone should read this book! (If you’re into that sort of thing.)
4.00 - 4.50 stars: I appreciated many aspects of this book. I recommend it!
3.00 - 3.75 stars: I liked some aspects of this book. I won’t revisit it, but someone else might really like it.
2.00 - 2.75 stars: There were some things I appreciated about this book, but I do not recommend it.
0.25 - 1.75 stars: I do not recommend this book. I did not enjoy or appreciate the experience of it.

Post Date: 14 October 2024