Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Despite this being a horror novel about slaying a vampire it really, at the core, felt like a coming of age story. Also, despite their being a plentiful amount of media and literature about vampires, this novel is one of the few stories where the vampire felt like a true predator.

There were a few things that bothered me, of course. One being that the main character’s son is obsessed with nazis (it doesn’t add anything to the plot) and the climax of the book, the part that I waited nearly 400 pages for, finished in two chapters.

Content Warnings

alwayslol's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

A little funny, a little dark, a little gross and a little frustrating. But overall pretty decent.

Content Warnings

e_gallego's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

You can tell the vampire was evil early on because he’s an Ayn Rand fan.

Jokes aside, this book inspires conflicted feelings for me. It is, to put it bluntly, a brutal book to get through while still being interesting. Someone else on here said: this is a fun and easy read, and to them I’d ask “what the fuck are you talking about?” The content warning list is about a mile long but the hardest scenes were definitely those portraying rape, domestic violence, pedophilia, and body horror. If you’re squeamish in any way about any of the above, or animals trying to crawl inside you, do not read lol.

A lot of people felt that the title was misleading as it 1) implied more than one vampire and 2) it gave the vibe of something much lighter than what it was. But you figure out pretty early in that the book is neither of those things, so that didn’t bother me.

Grady’s book is a very interesting and subversive take on the vampire. The vampire historically (especially Dracula) has signified a xenophobic threat to an Anglo Protestant society, a reverse colonialism in which a foreigner comes to your land and corrupts your society. And this is a running theme in the book that Grady hits often about middle class white families: they are so terrified of strangers, of those who don’t look like them, that they do everything they can to keep them out via gated communities and expensive country clubs. But the vampire, the predator, is not a stranger. He’s not a foreigner: he’s the guy who has solidified himself in your community as someone trusting, as someone of value. You trust him with you money, your house, your kids and all along, behind all those superficial characteristics that white middle class families care about (being white, being wealthy, having what they deem as appropriate manners) he’s a fucking monster that’s causing harm. And the truth about predators, despite what true crime and conservatives want you to believe—that it’s foreigners who will rape your women, take your children, and destroy your nuclear family and the fabric of society—they are actually people close to you. Uncles, fathers, priests, etc. Grady’s book thus is a subversion of the xenophobic vampire trope, turning it on its head to portray that predators are those in your so called safe communities and people will go to great lengths to protect them, especially if predators financially benefit others.

Grady does a good job imo providing nuance to all his characters. Our main lot is a group of middle class, white, house wives who on varying levels chafe with their allotment in life: as stay at home wives for unappreciative husbands and as mothers to difficult children. They all yearn for more stimulation in their own personal lives, which leads them to create a book club. Grady is never without sympathy to these women, most of whom are in abusive relationships with husbands who control every aspect of their lives from their bank accounts, to decisions in their lives, and some even being physically violent. Gaslighting is abound, especially for our protagonist, and it’s truthfully very painful to read, because it’s real. And yet, Grady is not apologetic for these women and their flaws: namely, the way their class and race has severe consequences for black working class people. It is, after all, the 90s in the South. At first, I was off put by Mrs. Greene’s introduction as I thought I came off a bit Mammy-ish but as the book progressed, and Mrs. Greene became a complicated character of her own, I realized that our first impression was not a reflection of Grady, but Patricia’s POV. With Patricia’s dawning realization of class and race (sorta), Mrs. Greene evolves as a full human. She isn’t simply the help; she’s a struggling mother as well, she’s a woman respected in her own community. Grady is scathingly honest about the white middle class and their insistence upon comfort and wealth for themselves—even if it means other marginalized people suffer directly by consequence. It is only until these women are directly affected that they then all urge themselves to do something, though that is a very reluctant thing because the predator targeting their children is also supplying their families with LOTS of money for housing development investments that was once a neighborhood for poor black people (what do vampires and landlords have in common? They are both blood sucking leeches!).

The last 1/3rd is kinda where things to me feel like they fall apart. There is a graphic body horror scene that features black demonic semen seeping forth from one of the characters after the vampire rapes her. It’s a lot. I never quite know how to feel about rape in horror, as it is often distasteful and used to shock audiences. Was a graphic physical description of the semen leaving Slick necessary? I don’t know. The rape scene itself, while hard, I found was handled much more respectfully/tactfully than the previous semen scene. It’s heartbreaking and brutal, underscoring how when women do try to push back against harm, they are punished and scared into submission. And that happens to many of them: slick being raped to silence her; Grace being beaten by her husband; Patricia being gaslit constantly and forcefully institutionalized. It is the reinforcement of women’s role in society as the quiet and demure housewife and mother.

Though the vampire is a pedophile that preys on both boys and girls, the book primarily focuses on his violence against women because the book largely speaks about patriarchal violence and that no matter class or race, no one is spared. Black girls violation is swept under the rug, and used as a weapon against poor black women; Korey’s grooming and rape speaks to how girls are often forgotten in the chaos of life, their problems diminished and infantilized as hormones or college stress, and thus fall through the cracks; Slick’s rape is punishment to put her back in her place as a silent, scared, and dutiful housewife; and lastly, Patricia’s rape, in which she believes her last piece of leverage is her body and sexuality, when she has depleted her wits, which speaks to housewives who are nothing but sexual objects to their husbands. She is something to be claimed, she and her family are a status that James Harris wants to exploit and literally suck dry. But even that is wrenched from her and it is instead something used to humiliate and subjugate her: there is no victory to be found in this barter.

When the women realize their sins in the hospital, I found the writing to be strangely heavy handed. What they are all saying is technically true, but Grady has been beating the audience over the head now for 2/3rds of the book with this theme concerning gender, race, and class. Felt clumsy to have our protagonists practically turn to the audience and say explicitly “it’s because we’re white women who didn’t care about the suffering of poor black people”. Like, for example, when Slick repeats that Proverb, she didn’t need to say anything else but that. It says it all without being heavy handed.

The climactic fight scene makes you scream in frustration at how clumsy the whole thing is. I get it, they are all housewives who have never had to do anything of the sort. But my GOD ladies can we think for a second?? If his spinal cord keeps regenerating why are we not either 1) continuously severing it or 2) lobbing off his head first??

I like that Mrs. Greene doesn’t forgive the women, despite them all coming together to help. In the end those women get to go back to comfortable homes with their children safe. Six Mile however has been destroyed for their greed, many black people forced to flee their homes; and so many black children are dead.

I don’t like that Slick died. I don’t find it did anything narratively for me.

I like that the vampire cannot be killed. That’s great; the monster shall always return, as monster theory states. And in the case of the vampire in this book, the threat of his predatoriness cannot ever be exterminated. Though there is only one of his kind, there are so much abusers in this world, and so many people who choose to protect them. The threat then shall always persist.

I HATE that nothing really bad happened to the husbands. Boo hoo you lost your money: how about you k*LL yourselves? Carter made me so mad that I was like “if he doesn’t get murdered or blow his brains out, I’m giving the book zero stars”. It’s whatever; he instead gets a divorce and Patricia is free of him. But all the other women return home to their loser piece of shit husbands, including Grace whose husband beat the shit out of her. I simply think they should all drink bleach for collectively abusing their wives :)

Grady approaches race semi well, but there’s a lot of strange things going on: where are all the husbands to these wives? Like where is Mr. Greene? Why are all the black mothers seemingly single mothers? That lowkey feels racist. Why are black men completely missing from the narrative beyond being nameless/faceless waiters, abused children, or aggressive teenagers? Grady gives personhood to Mrs. Greene when Patricia begins to see her as more than the help, but Mrs. Greene is kinda the only black person who is allowed to be a full character. Those teenagers, who are viewed as aggressive criminals by Kitty and Patricia, aren’t brought back for any sort of actualization. I get the book is about the violence against women, so it centers women, but it’s just bizarre how black men are completely missing from the narrative. Grady has a lot to say about gender race and class but that seems to disappear in regards to black men and boys.

Also. What the fuck was Blue’s obsession with Nazis about??? I know it’s supposed to say something, it’s not a small storyline and is constantly brought up in his character arc. Clearly he’s a troubled kid affected by his broken family and watching his mother be drugged by his father into submission, and is being groomed by a pedo, but I really know what specifically it is about the Nazis that was so enthralling to him. Like he was obsessed with them BEFORE Patricia tried to kill herself, before things started falling apart. I don’t have answers for that one.

Content Warnings

e3z's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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