Liisa Ladouceur upends the dour face of vampirism with her
gleeful new book How to Kill a Vampire: Fangs in Folklore, Film, and
Fiction. Like a Goth Mary Roach, she offers a breezy yet detailed history
of vampires in culture (pop and otherwise), paying special attention to the myriad
ways to dispatch a peckish vamp. We learn the roots of vampires’ allergies to
silver, sunlight, stakes, and all other sundry preventive measures. There are
profiles of slayers from Van Helsing to Buffy and an international dictionary
of vampire-like demons and the various ways those creatures can be killed
(nastiest method: destroy the Penanggalan of Malaysia by snaring its exposed
intestines on thorns; least nastiest method: give the Langsuir, also of
Malaysia, a haircut and neatly place the trimmings in a hole). Valuable
information, of course, but it’s Ladouceur’s writing that makes How to Kill a Vampire a full-on fun
read. Her style is witty and jolly throughout, even when running down the litany
of vampire suicide methods or describing how vampire babies tend to tear
through their moms from the inside.
