True crime will teach you life
Several women, each with a large home, children, husband, sometimes even a dog. They meet regularly to talk about the books they have read. The families explain, just in case, that they focus on the Bible , but their reading brings to mind the Old Testament – these are very bloody stories. They read about Ted Bundy and other serial killers, crimes in affect or what happened one time in Hollywood. They experience these books really deeply and that’s why when a mysterious new inhabitant appears in their neighborhood, some of them become suspicious …
I’ve been waiting for this book since the very first announcements and interviews with Hendrix came out. On the one hand, because it takes place in the same “universe” as My Best Friend’s Exorcism – there is even a street where one of the protagonists lived. On the other hand, because the Book Clubit was supposed to show a view from a completely different perspective – an adult, not a teenager. Someone who cares most about the fact that no kid finds a horror story, and certainly not the child who is raised and drives after school to sports classes. Women who deal with invisible work on a daily basis: cleaning, cooking, providing comfort to all those who “do serious things”, study or travel. As the author himself stated – this book is supposed to do justice to his mother. He is to confront mothers whose lives are described by the slogan “responsibility and obligations” with beings that do not have any such limitations.
The women shown by Hendrix are loyal, intelligent and effective. They throw sharp retorts, they know what secrets of the universe are revealed while ironing men’s underwear. You will enjoy their meetings and conversations. Their carefully organized world, which can suddenly collapse in ruins, because someone from the family will be seduced by unimaginable and unsightly evil.
The pain and splendor of the 90s
Guide to Slaying Vampires takes place in the last decade of the 20th century. It is a time of crazy consumerism, progress, self-confident feminism, businesswomen in power suits and house hens ready for almost anything. Cheap pocket-size genre literature. X-archive and fascination with profilers. If you want to remember this atmosphere, reach for Ecstasy. The 90s by Anna Gacek. With Hendrix, you will undoubtedly feel the mood, but the consequences will be visible above all.
In writing about unrestricted creatures earlier, I should have mentioned another important contrast that Hendrix shows: between the perfect housewife and her husband. The members of the southern book club consider themselves independent, maybe even liberated. They have no problem making decisions, the home budget is often in their hands, the constantly absent spouse would not really know what could be needed. Unfortunately, when it comes to the most important elections, those who have money and do important business take power. And it is because of them that evil has a chance to win. Hendrix consistently criticizes not so much the rich as the cult of money – someone will sell their soul againand others will suffer the consequences. It shows gender and property inequalities. Everything that was discussed so much at the end of the century that today turns out to be an unsolved problem.
What about that promised vampire? It does appear, sometimes electrifying like from some pocket edition of Anne Rice, at other times gravitating towards a naturalistic gore. Hendrix plays again with a sudden change of mood, a breakdown in the aesthetics of a rich suburb suddenly overwhelmed by the plague of rats. You know all this from his books; the author consistently uses his sharp, unsmoothed style.
I want to go to the book club!
I wrote that I was waiting a lot for this book. I could have read it months ago in English… but that would be a bit pointless. In keeping with the spirit of the book club, I wanted the experience of chatting, exchanging views on a bookstagram, chatting about it with my mother, who doesn’t read horror movies but likes Hendrix. For me, this is a great advantage of a horror novel on the border of moral literature – it goes beyond the framework of the genre, thanks to which it intrigues both its fans and readers who stick to other shelves.
Sliding the Vampire Robbers Guide to Mom or Dad is of course possible thanks to the translation. Bartosz Czartoryski’s translation sounds very good, the retort is accurate, I have not seen any traces of English. Two or three sentences happened here that I couldn’t understand, but it’s a matter of redaction and disappearing commas (and maybe even words). Most importantly, in Polish you have all this Hendrix range of emotions: humor in one chapter, disgust in the next. The language works: first you will live in a quiet, petty-bourgeois neighborhood, then you will be terrified at the sight of a vampire, a predator stalking your pampered playground.
Grady Hendrix has written a great horror film and a very good feminist novel. One where you can’t be sure what is the most terrible: a vampire or a conspiracy of silence, the need to keep up appearances. And then you will see that properly used appearances and cleaners can do wonders. It’s only better to have all the members of your book club with you then.
