Monthly Archives: June 2020

Grady Hendrix is one of my favorite writers. I knew back in 2015, when I read Horrorstor on a cross-country road trip, that I wanted to read everything this author had to say about horror, friendship, nostalgia, and consumerism. Recommended by many and described by a friend as “Fright Night, but about the parents,” never have I ever pre-ordered a book so quickly.

*This review contains what might be considered spoilers, though no major plot points are discussed/revealed. Read with caution if you haven’t picked up this novel yet!

The prologue warns us, this book ends in blood. It is unambiguous: yes, there is a vampire in this book. Yes, there is danger for our characters. And yes, one way or another, this book’s climax? Gory and gross, and don’t you forget it. Sure, there are carpools and laundry detergent and many proper Southern manners, but this story can only lead to one conclusion: blood.

As bold a proclamation as that is, it is hilariously forgotten within the first few chapters. We meet Patricia, the wife and mother of two young children, who is trying to join the well-respected community book club but didn’t get around to reading the book. She was busy taking care of her family, the typical brood of late 1980s suburban South Carolina. Her overwhelmed confession gets the attention of a small group of women who find the important books boring anyway: Grace, Slick, Kitty, and Maryellen. They decide to form their own group, which they refuse to call a “book club” because it seems too stodgy.

Their literature of choice? Unsolved mysteries, true crimes, and serial killer memoirs.

Grace is the impeccable image of an Old Dominion housewife: prim, proper, slightly cold, fiercely proud. Slick is a Bible-beating shrinking violet, a sheltered but kind woman who doesn’t tell her family about the book “club.” Kitty is a loud and proud PTA parent, and the initiator of their split from the literary society. Maryellen is from New England, the tough wife of a cop with a low tolerance for bullshit. Though their personalities differ, their shared experience as housewives in a tight-knit neighborhood — and their penchant for researching the Zodiac murders, among others — bind them together.

When Patricia starts noticing odd things in their quiet neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant, she doesn’t know what to think. A new man has moved into a deceased relative’s house, and he just seems so strange.  After a few more encounters, though, she is relieved to discover how personable and friendly this stranger is. She still gets a bad feeling from time to time. And his stories about his past don’t entirely add up…

But she doesn’t want to be a bad neighbor. She doesn’t want to make waves. Above all, she doesn’t want her husband or children thinking she’s being weird. All this despite the increasingly hard-to-ignore reality that there are weird things happening, and she has a feeling if she doesn’t do something, there’s going to be hell to pay.

A very interesting, and devastating, aspect of this novel is the character of Ms. Green. An early stressor introduced in Patricia’s story is Patricia’ mother-in-law, who moves in with her family due to failing physical health and dementia. Mrs. Green is hired as her caregiver, and she is a delightful foil to the old woman’s grumpy disposition. A Black woman living in a redlined area just outside of Mt. Pleasant, she brings perspective and reality to Patricia’s handwringing: the danger she fears is already happening on her side of town, and it’s being ignored because it’s not happening to the children of rich, white families. What kind of mother, Mrs. Green asks, would not help another mother in need?

There are so many things to like about this book. The atmosphere of dread is constant, but our lone stranger is just so damn charming on the page that…even we as readers sometimes question if we’re really seeing the ghoul Patricia fears. And then we realize, that’s what our characters are being made to feel at every moment, for year after year. Gaslit, ignored, and called flat-out hysterical, the band of true crime friends are fighting monsters as well as sexism and the status quo.

My favorite line of the book occurs when one of our book clubbers is being admonished for spending her days polishing china. When told all she aspires to be is someone’s perfect wife, she cries out, “You say it like it’s nothing!” My heart ached for her deeply, even though I agreed with the charge against her in the context of the a narrative (saving children > fine china). Maybe it’s because my own mother prided herself so deeply on how she kept our home. Maybe it’s because for the vast majority of our history, women have been expected to submit to men’s whims and have suffered severe consequences for standing against those desires. Or maybe it’s because she stands so strong throughout most of the book but sounds so very fragile in that moment. It’s an excellent, empathetic bit of writing.

5 out of 5 glasses of red wine while reading In Cold Blood on a floral couch.

I have been meaning to type this review for a long time! But it was hard to put all of my thoughts together cohesively. I read these three books, by women and about aspects of being a woman, back to back to back and it left a very strong impression.

I will say at the outset that I feel like The Power and Red Clocks would have benefitted from an exploration of transwomanhood, as there were biological and legal concepts that would have been enriched by it, and of course I would always like to see a more culturally inclusive cast of characters. When we talk about feminism, in the year 2020, there is absolutely no reason we can’t have that discussion be bolstered and made more relevant by committing to intersectional feminism. Its absence in literature about gender, parenthood, and societal upheaval is loud.

Electricity

The Power, by Naomi Alderman, is a science fiction/superhero approach to gender inequality on a global scale, through a handful of POVs that we follow over the course of several years. What would happen to society if men were no longer considered as threatening because of a literal surge of power in women? Women gain the ability to channel electricity and shock others with it through a quasi-spiritual, quasi-evolutionary turn and every aspect of civilization is affected. Religion, politics, crime…violence against women no longer dominates any culture. It is fascinating and brutal, positing that such great harm comes at an enormous cost, even if it does seek to “balance the scales.”

5 out of 5 Earl Grey teas at a stressful state dinner.

Fire

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng, tells the story of two families in the late 1990s: the Richardsons, a family of wealth and reputation in Shaker Heights, OH, and the Warrens, a free-spirited artist mother and daughter pair who come into the neighborhood after a lifetime of moving around.

We see the world of each of these mothers, and their obvious contrasts. The Richardson home is filled with plush furniture, Diet Cokes, and crown molding in every room. All seems well in the home, with the exception of rebellious Izzy, who rebels against her mother’s niceties and shallow pleasures in favor of Doc Martens, loud music, and radical political ideas. Meanwhile, a few streets over at their rental home, Mia and Pearl live amidst DIY furniture, stacks of photographs, and leftover Chinese food from Pearl’s part-time job. Pearl becomes close to the Richardson children, entwining the two mothers’ lives uncomfortably together.

Adding to the tension is a custody case that has the community completely divided: a Chinese-American baby girl was put up for adoption by a distraught young single mother, who now wants to reclaim custody. The themes of motherhood, “proper” parenting, and the middle class anxiety of the 1990s all seem to lead our families only to destruction, but within the chaos there might be hope, as well.

3.5 out of 5 Diet Cokes while flipping through a June 1998 Seventeen magazine.

Blood

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas is a dystopia so close to reality, it seems like the possibility of its world existing is only a few years away. Abortion is completely banned in America, and leaving the country to get the procedure done in Canada is blocked by an agreement between the two nations known as The Pink Wall. Abortion-seekers are extradited back to the US if they’re suspected of traveling for that purpose. We follow several women though extremely different worldviews and circumstances, though with more in common than first meets the eye.

A mysterious woman who seems out of time and place, a forest druid who refers to women’s “clocks” and “waters.”

An angry, intelligent woman racing the clock against an unjust law that would close the possibility of motherhood to her forever.

A young woman, terrified, not ready to have a child.

A lonely woman who loves her children but ultimately despises her marriage, and the unseen work of domesticity.

And a woman whose life we never truly inhabit. A life lived long ago, one which found solace not in family but in unfamiliar ice flows in the Arctic.

Their stories all highlight the different ways we experience the idea of motherhood, legacy, choice, jealousy, and our bonds with other women.

2.5 out of 5 strange cups of mushroom and dandelion brew to cure cramps and bloating. Wait…is that a twig floating in it?