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Reviews tagging 'Addiction'
Güney Kitap Kulübü'nün Vampir Avlama Rehberi by Grady Hendrix, Elif Dinçer
110 reviews
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Violence, Blood
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Minor: Addiction
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child death, Rape, Sexual assault, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, Gaslighting
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Rape, Sexual violence
Moderate: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Sexism, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Infidelity, Dementia, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Blood, Murder, Gaslighting, Classism
Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Murder
Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Drug use, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt
Graphic: Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicide, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Blood
Minor: Addiction, Animal death, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting
Graphic: Gore, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Murder
Moderate: Addiction
Graphic: Gore, Blood, Murder
Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail
There are hints of promise, specifically in the strength of female friendship and solidarity, but Hendrix's writing is so rooted in a shallow faux-feminism that it sabotages the book at every turn. For one thing, he can't help but describe women's bodies in detail, even when the context would make such specificity frivolous at best. It's a symptom of a larger problem, though, and only gets worse as the story approaches the climax, where Hendrix resorts to the threat of sexual violence or the act itself to ramp up the tension in ways I found to be distasteful. The book wants to paint a picture of how men have historically abused women, treating them like objects or tools for their pleasure or pursuit of power. I'm all for that, especially in a "vampire" period piece like this. But when that book also has a habit of treating its women the same way as the men it condemns, any semblance of commentary quickly deteriorates.
It doesn't help that the characters are predominantly defined by their genders and the traits stereotypically associated with them. Those aren't bad traits for a character to have, mind you, but I struggle to believe that women in the era were exclusively defined by their roles as wives and mothers. The insistence on defining all these characters by different shades of those characteristics was disappointing, especially since Hendrix failed to give the women any interior lives or depth beyond the basest impulses projected onto them. At the very least, though, he knows his way around the genre, and his fast-paced, zippy writing makes this an easy page-turner. He also has a knack for setting up nail-biting scenarios that gross you out just as much as they keep you flipping pages. Granted, some of those scenarios end up falling into the same problems I had with the rest of the book, but the build-up was there, at least. If Hendrix had more self-awareness about his limits and strengths, this could've been a pulpy banger of a book, but alas.
None of these problems are unique to this book, though—I recognize many of his worst impulses from some of Stephen King's earlier works, alongside plenty of other male horror writers. But we (meaning white men like myself) can do better than this, and it's frustrating when I find books that seem to tell me otherwise.
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt
Minor: Domestic abuse, Drug abuse
Graphic: Death, Gore, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Dementia, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Moderate: Child death, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt
Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic relationship, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Toxic friendship
P.S. Everyone in this book should have gotten a divorce.
Tw for rape
Minor: Addiction, Physical abuse