After reading The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires I was intrigued by the writing of Grady Hendrix. As promised, I checked out a couple of his other books. I bought Paperbacks From Hell from a few years back which was more of a compilation of weird books I remember seeing at B Dalton growing up. I found it to be more of a resource book for finding obscure books to read, so I decided to stick to Hendrix's more fictional works and read My Best Friend's Exorcism.
This book went deep into the recesses of my mind. It brought up memories of my childhood best friend and how we made it though the 1980s. We did the same
things Hendrix writes about in My BF Ex...we crimped each other's hair, wore too much make up, took best friend magazine
quizzes, sang songs, all while underage drinking and partying in fields. (Don't you dare judge me. I was a headbanger in the 1980s ~ that's what you did!) We had air brushed
Ts that said we were BFFs, we even had the Best Friends heart necklaces that were split in two. I had the "Be Fri" part of the heart
charm. We thought we would rule the world together. Ahh... to be 12 again.
The difference from the book and my life is that my bestie and I grew in different directions. She got
married right out of high school to a guy ten years her senior (that I always felt
didn't particularly like me) and they moved away. I went to college,
then grad school.
We kept in
touch via mail and phone calls. She did move back eventually and bought a house, and had two kids. When we did get together she usually had her kids in tow and was distracted by them. She would talk about our "glory days" and
how we should have a reunion with old friends, I'd be talking about my
Masters thesis. She was looking back and I was looking forward. We
drifted apart and didn't have much in common anymore. There was never a "break-up" per se, it just happened.
In my mid twenties, I ran into her at the airport.
Both if us were picking up friends there. I found out she worked in a
factory, but got in a bad car accident and injured her back so she
couldn't work anymore. We said our goodbyes and wished each other well.
That was about 20 years ago. I often think of her and wonder what she's
up to.
I didn't want to post a pic of her without her permission, hence the black dot. This was us in 1991. Big hair, too much makeup, stone washed jeans. We probably have slouch socks on and high top sneakers on too. My guess is she was smoking. She smoked like a chimney and we were only 14. I always look really tall in pictures. I'm only 5'6" I swear!
This book took me
back there. Of course she was never possessed by an evil demon, but during our angsty teen years I feel like anything could have been possible. We did get into fist fights a couple times, so there's that, but I digress...let's get into the book, shall we?
***WARNING SPOILER ALERT***
So yeah, it takes place in the 1980s and is about two girl friends and one of them gets possessed by a demon, but the power of their friendship saves her. The end.
Comparatively, both The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires and My Best Friends Exorcism have the same themes. The possession in My BF Ex is a slow process and the meat of the book. The horrific things that Abby's best friend does to their friend group is slow and calculated. A dog gets killed too. Abby has to prove to everyone that her friend is possessed, so the same frustration that you feel in the other book ~ of no one listening to her ~ and feelings being ignored are extremely similar. Same type of people and neighborhood in both books too, cul de sac rich kids whose families own multiple homes. There's one part near the end when you think the showdown between both girls is going to happen, then it doesn't. I was psyched out by this part. When the real exorcism happens it's drawn out and ends up being pretty goofy. Not the blood and gore I was hoping for, and rather anti-climatic. Personally, I think the ending is a downer. Major spoiler~ in the very, very end of the book, when they are old and gray, one of them dies, but unlike me and my BFF they are friends until the end! Both are both pretty easy to read and you get hooked because you really want to find out what happens next.
An unresolved question that I was hoping to find out by the end... What happened that night they took LSD? I guess we'll never know.
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