Review: My Best Friend's Exocism by Grady Hendrix

American horror writer Grady Hendrix takes every 80s stereotype and a whole lot of 80s pop music, puts it into a blender and comes out with one very brilliant novel that executes every cliche in a way that is both well written, slightly hilarious and very nostalgic.

Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade, when Gretchen was the only kid to show up at Abby's ET themed roller skating birthday party. Since then, despite their differing economic circumstances (Gretchen's family keeps getting wealthier and Abby's family keeps getting poorer,) the pair have shared many things together. Including the first time that they try LSD at a sleepover. From that moment on, Gretchen begins acting strangely, but Abby is the only one who is able to see and understand what is going on. Gretchen has a demon inside of her and needs an exorcism, pronto. Meanwhile, as the town residents ignore Abby and her pleas (remember, she's from a poor family, so she's considered the bad one,) Gretchen doles out punishments to many of the townspeople that are as hilarious as they are sick and twisted. (It really is difficult to feel sorry for Margaret who drank all the tapeworms. As for Glee ... well it's hard not to giggle.) Can Abby save Gretchen before it's too late? 

And will anyone believe Abby.

This was a great read, packed with lots of nostalgia. Each chapter references a different 80s pop song and anyone who grew up in the latter part of the 20th century will recognise any number of pop culture references, from ET to the thrill of reading a Judy Blume novel. The VHS themed cover is an utterly brilliant and atmospheric touch. 

Highly recommended. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more