The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

“She and Carter had moved to the Old Village last year because they’d wanted to live somewhere with plenty of space, somewhere quiet, and somewhere, most importantly, safe. They wanted more than just a neighborhood, they wanted a community, where your home said you espoused a certain set of values. Somewhere protected from the chaos and the ceaseless change of the outside world. Somewhere the kids could play outside all day, unsupervised, until you called them in for supper.”

Paranoia about safety pervades the narrative and is the value many characters hold most highly. Old Village is deeply committed to maintaining its exclusive and restricted community with shared values; Gracious Cay will be appealing because it will be a gated development that can keep the people out with a physical barrier.

“Patricia realized that for four years, these were the women she’d seen every month. She’d talked to them about her marriage, her children, and gotten frustrated with them, and argued with them, and seen all of them cry at some point, and somewhere along the line, among all the slaughtered coeds, and shocking small-town secrets, and missing children, and true accounts of the cases that changed America forever, she’d learned two things: they were all in this together, and if their husbands ever took out a life insurance policy on them they were in trouble.”

The importance of friendship between women, a crucial theme in Southern literature, is one of the driving forces of the story. Patricia has been isolated as a mother and caregiver. The community and friendships established through the love of reading, and the love of each other, will allow Patricia to grow—and to defeat the antagonist.

“She refused to let anyone eat from the peach tree in backyard no matter how good fruit looked because she said it had been planted in sadness and the fruit tasted bitter.

The peach tree, an image of which is on the cover of the first edition of the book, is a decorate town element that has papered over a gruesome, racist secret for decades. The tree is planted over the body of Leon Simmons, a Black veteran whom white Mt. Pleasant residents lynched after James Harris blamed him for murdering three boys—boys James himself had killed. Covering up a crime with something lovely doesn’t erase the crime—though the novel never delivers the justice Leon deserves.

“‘A reader lives many lives’ James Harris said. ‘The person who doesn’t read lives but one. But if you’re happy just doing what you’re told and reading what other people think you should read, then don’t let me stop you. I just find it sad.’”

The importance of literacy is a frequent motif. Ironically, it’s the monstrous James Harris who here scolds Korey for not taking advantage of books. By reading, she could open her mind to so much more than the life she knows in Mt. Pleasant. James Harris has lived many lives as a vampire—an experience that mortals can approach through literature.

“She weighed her sympathy against what Carter would say when he balanced the checkbook. But it was her money, too, wasn’t it? That was what Carter always said when she asked him for her own bank account: this money belonged to both of them. She was a grown woman and could use it however she saw fit, even if it was to help another man.”

Carter’s control over Patricia is silent and insidious. Though she once had a career as a nurse, she now worries that the money Carter earns after becoming the family’s sole earner is not really hers to spend. When James Harris comes to town, he upsets the typical order of everyday life. As Patricia uses the Campbells’ money to help James Harris get settled, she questions the power structures in which she finds herself. These small moments wake her up to the inequity of her marriage.

“The inside of Patricia’s skull lit up with alarm bells. She’d read enough to know that anyone saying that, especially a stranger, was about to ask you to take a package over the border or park outside a jewelry store and keep the engine running. But when was the last time anyone had even said the word cool to her?”

Patricia often gets into dangerous situations because despite her strong survival instincts and intelligence, she has an overwhelming sense of adventure and curiosity. Additionally, the fact that the word “cool” has such an impact on her shows that Patricia is yearning for something outside of her boring stay-at-home mom existence. This desire makes her an easier target for James Harris, and eventually helps her seek out an identity outside the one assigned to her by society.

“It’s a gated community we’re building out by Six Mile. It’s going to really elevate the surroundings. Gated communities let you choose your neighbors so the people around you are the kind of people you want around your children.”

Slick’s statement about Gracious Cay elaborates on the theme of creating a controlled environment for raising a family. Many of the white parents in Mt. Pleasant want a homogenous environment, comprised of people that are from the same racial, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds. Though Gracious Cay, an example of gentrification, is clearly encroaching on the existing community of Six Mile, the prosperous white Old Village families care little about driving out their neighbors.

“Patricia felt exposed. She smelled the ghost of used incontinence pads and spilled coffee ground, and she saw Mrs. Savage squatting in her nightgown, shoving raw meat in her mouth, and Miss Mary, standing naked in the doorway, a skinned squirrel, hair streaming water, waving a useless photograph, and she ran for the front door and slammed it behind her, pushing it hard against the wind, and shot the deadbolt home.”

Patricia’s fear of the elderly women in her life is not just the fear of the animalistic impulses Mrs. Savage and Miss Mary exhibit, but also the inevitability that one day she will also be an old woman. Patricia often wonders what will become of her when she grows too old to take care of herself. After she spends her life dedicated to others, the thought that the favor might not be returned is difficult and scary.

“Nightwalking men always have a hunger on them [...] they never stop taking and they don’t know about enough. They mortgaged their souls away and now they eat and eat and never know how to stop.”

The novel warns against excessive hunger, whether James’s Harris endless desire for blood, or the white men’s bottomless greed for money. The self-serving nature of these characters’ gluttony direct contrasts the self-sacrificing nature of the novel’s women. Hunger and greed end in isolation. Self-sacrifice leads to camaraderie among those who are willing to work together for the greater good.

“We’re not quite Mt. Pleasant, not quite Awendaw, not quite anyplace. Certainly not the Old Village. Besides, one little boy has an accident, an old lady runs away with some man, the police figure it’s just colored people being colored. It’d be like reporting on a fish for being wet.”

Mrs. Greene describes the racism inherent in Old Village and police attitudes toward the Black community of Six Mile. Its poor residents are isolated in a location that is “not quite anyplace,” though the novel never moves beyond a one-note presentation of its Black characters, characters which reinforce the same stereotypes that Hendrix is ostensibly writing against. Just as the novel’s gender politics recycle the conflicts of the 1960s despite the plot taking place in the 1990s, so too is the novel very limited in its discussion of race.

“Patricia thought about James Harris, somewhere out in the woods with a little girl in his arms, doing something unspeakable to her. She couldn’t picture that part clearly, but she imagined it was Korey. She imagined it was Blue. She imagined the police would be a while.”

Patricia decides whether to act based on empathy. Here, she sees imagines herself in the situation, which causes her to search for Destiny Taylor on her own, instead of waiting for the police. Patricia is firm in her belief that mothers have the duty to protect all children, whether they belong to them by blood. The downside of this kind of motivation is that when Patricia can’t picture herself in someone else’s shoes, she does nothing: When the police accuse Wanda Taylor of abuse and take Destiny away, Patricia can’t imagine Korey or Blue in the same scenario, so she never feels the urgency to use her influence to intervene.

“‘I don’t want to hear of course,’ Mrs. Greene said, ‘When I tell someone what’s happening out here they see an old woman living in the country who’s never been to school. When you tell them, they see a doctor’s wife from the Old Village and they pay attention. I don’ like to ask for favors but I need you to make them pay attention to this. You know I did everything I could to save Miss Mary. I gave my blood for her. When you called me on the telephone tonight you said we’re all mothers. Yes, ma’am, we are. Give me your blood. Help me.’”

Mrs. Greene spells Patricia’s privilege: Patricia has more of a chance at helping save Destiny because she is white, her husband is a doctor, and her family is wealthy. Mrs. Greene urges Patricia to expend as much effort to repay Mrs. Greene and the Six Mile community as Mrs. Greene did when fighting off the swarm of rats and trying to keep Miss Mary alive—Mrs. Greene sacrificed her body in the process, so Patricia owes her a similar amount of sacrifice.

“She wanted to call Grace, to tell her what she’d seen, but when Grace didn’t understand something, she refused to believe it existed.”

While this quote reveals something about Grace’s character specifically, it is also applicable to Old Village in general. Its residents refuse to believe that James Harris is a child molester, drug dealer, and murderer. They pretend that the abnormalities surrounding James Harris don’t exist, largely because it’s difficult to comprehend that a trusted white man could ever be as dangerous as Patricia claims. Grace shuts down the theory that James Harris is a villain, because she has grown used to ignoring the abusive monster in her own life: She pretends that her husband doesn’t hit her, sacrificing her relationship with Patricia to avoid confronting the messy truth.

“In every book we read, no one ever thought anything bad was happening until it was too late. This is where we live, it’s where our children live, it’s our home. Don’t you want to do absolutely everything you can to keep it safe?”

Patricia points out the hypocrisy of her fellow book club members judging Ann Rule, a friend of Ted Bundy, for not being willing or brave enough to trust their instincts, when they are so dedicated to ignoring the murderer in their midst. Patricia warns that inaction is dangerous—as their chosen book club fodder has shown time and again.

“If you haven’t heard what we have to say, then you have no right to tell us who we can and can’t speak to. We’re not our mothers. This isn’t the 1920s. We’re not some silly biddies sitting around sewing all day and gossiping. We’re in the Old Village more than any of you, and something is very wrong here.”

Patricia finds her voice, standing up for herself and her friends. It’s telling that Hendrix references the 1920s, when the book club is actually the next generation after the 1960s and 1970s. Grady Hendrix has built his novel anachronistically, as though his 1990s cohort is still living through the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s.

“[Y]’all were going to make us laughingstocks because you’re a bunch of crazy housewives with too much time on your hands.”

During the intervention, we see how the novel’s men truly feel about their wives. The women are often told they are crazy or prone to inventing fantasies whenever they report James Harris’s crimes—so much so that they begin to doubt themselves, in a classic case of gaslighting.

‘“I can’t stop you, Patty,’ Carter said. “But I can inform them that I believe my wife is not in her right mind. Because the first person they’ll call isn’t a judge to get a search warrant; it’ll be your husband. Ed’s made sure of that.’”

Carter establishes his dominance as a husband and as a wealthy, professional, white man. He threatens to use Patricia’s mental health issues against her to control her, and Patricia knows that because of his status and her lack of status, she will not be believed. Furthermore, Carter is colluding with Ed, a brutal police officer: The novel reinforces the idea that the old boys’ network preserves the existing power dynamics and structures of patriarchal society.

“It touched off a fire inside her, but Patricia had the clarity to see how carefully Carter had built this trap for her. Anything she did would prove him right. She could hear him saying, in his smooth psychiatric tones, It’s a sign of how sick you are, that you can’t see how sick you are.”

The manipulation and gaslighting that Carter uses on Patricia builds up until Patricia nearly dies by suicide. Not only has Carter set Old Village against her, but he has even coopted the family to his side: Korey informs her that Carter said Korey doesn’t have to obey Patricia.

“‘A no-good man will tell you he’s going to change,’ she said. ‘He’ll tell you whatever you want to hear, but you’re the fool if you don’t believe what you see. That’s him in this picture. That was Miss Mary who whispered to us. Everybody may be telling me different, but I know what I know.’”

Mrs. Greene’s speech to Patricia counters Carter’s verbal abuse; listening, Patricia begins trusting her own senses instead of believing she must rely on others to interpret reality. To stand up to James Harris, she must find strength within herself and step out of her dependency on others once and for all.

“‘I miss the books we used to read where at least there was a murder,’ Maryellen said. ‘The problem with book club these days is too may men. They don’t know how to pick a book to save their lives and they love to listen to themselves talk. It’s nothing but opinions, all day long.’”

The devolution of the original women-only book club into one that men could join waters down the members’ friendships as their husbands police their formerly safe space. Here, Maryellen expresses her desire to return to the safety of the original book club, where she could be free of speech and mind.

“‘He’s treated you like a fool,’ James Harris said. ‘Carter doesn’t see what a wonderful family he has, but I do. I have all along. I was there when your mother-in-law passed, and she was a good woman. I’ve watched Blue grow up and he’s got so much potential. You’re a good person. But your husband has thrown it all away.”

James Harris slowly tries to take Carter’s place, manipulating Patricia’s family by setting each member against the others—a technique that is particularly effective because he deploys what he has gleaned from each as a convincing semi-truth. Here, he is right that Miss Mary was a good woman, that Blue has potential, and that Carter disrespects his wife. Arguably, this conversation helps Patricia get the courage to walk away from her marriage.

“‘He has one weakness,’ Patricia said. ‘He’s alone. He’s not connected to other people, he doesn’t have any family or friends. If one of us so much as misses a carpool pickup everyone starts dropping by the house to make sure we’re okay. But he’s a loner. If we can make him disappear, totally and completely, there’s no one to ask questions.”

The novel’s women seem nosy or intrusive, but they do at heart sincerely care for one another. Their strength is friendship, so it makes sense that they defeat their antagonist because he is isolated by selfishness.

“Then again, I moved here because you people are all so stupid,’ he said. ‘You’ll take anyone at face value as long as he’s white and has money […] All I had to do was make you think I needed help and here comes that famous Southern hospitality.”

James Harris, mocking Patricia as she attempts to seduce him, admits that he has relied on stereotyping Southerners as stupid and racist. But the Southern hospitality James ridicules is the reasons for his downfall: Southerners look out for each other.