literaryhorror – Tattered Covers & Broken Spines

Chlorine

A Coming-of-Age Tale of Body Horror

5/5 Star Review

Ren Yu grew up on stories of mermaids. She knows all of the myths, legends, and truths. Mermaids drove her to swimming at a young age and now in her teens, she is a competitive swimmer. She starts and ends her days at the pool and her only goal is to get scouted so that she can get a full scholarship to college. Chlorine follows Ren on her path from girlhood to womanhood and all of the changes and pressures that transistion brings. As her junior regional competition looms ahead and the stress is as high as it’s ever been, Ren starts to lose herself as a human and gives into her mermaid desires.

This book, you guys – this book! It ticks so many boxes for me: Coming-of-age? Check. Body horror? Check. Literary horror? Check. Sapphic longing? Check. All of these elements are wound up into a tightly written narrative from a protagonist that is, to put it quite simply, other.

We experience all of these “firsts” with Ren as she looks back on her human life, through the lens of a queer, immigrant mermaid. This sounds a little out there – I know, but stick with me on this one because the prose and the story are just so good! Chlorine is one of the best debut novels that I have read in quite some time. It was unique, spellbinding, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Jade Song is one to watch out for and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more of their works in the future.

On The Savage Side

A novel of unforgettable women by Tiffany McDaniel

5/5 Star Review

After Betty, Tiffany McDaniel cemented herself as an absolute must-read author for me and On the Savage Side did not disappoint.

First and foremost, this novel is dedicated to, and inspired by, six real-life women who have come to be known as the Chillicothe Six: Charlotte Trego, Tameka Lynch, Wanda Lemons, Shasta Himelrick, Timberly Claytor, and Tiffany Sayre. They went missing over the course of 2014-2015 and their murders remain unsolved. These women were mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends – they were people who mattered to someone and it’s important that they be remembered as such and not just another statistic.

“The first sin was believing we would never die. The second sin was believing we were alive in the first place.”

On the Savage Side is a novel about twin sisters, Arcade and Daffodil, who are born to addicts. During their childhood, they are often pulled away from that environment by their loving grandmother – a woman full of love and stories. After a tragic accident that leaves their grandmother dead, the girls are forced back into their home with their parents and aunt and enter the cycle of generational poverty and addiction. Arc and Daffy are working the streets of Chillicothe when the first woman is found dead in the river. One by one, their friends start to disappear and Arc becomes increasingly desperate to save her sister and herself.

This novel left me utterly gutted. It is tragic and bleak and heart-wrenching. McDaniel’s lyrical prose paints a landscape that is beautiful in its brutality and characters who are unforgettable. On the Savage Side pulls no punches and details what life is like for the women who we like to forget exist in our society. The women who we look down upon because of poverty and addiction. The women who are someone to somebody, but whose disappearances and assaults go unsolved because of their station in life.

It’s taken me some time to write this review. It’s not often that a book hits me so hard that I have to sit it down and walk away, but this one did. Several times. I felt so many emotions reading this novel – anger, disgust, sadness, depression – that when I finally finished it, I had to spend some time digesting it.

Horror fans might wonder why this would appeal to them and they shouldn’t be deceived by the novel being touted as literary fiction. This novel contains many horrific elements, the most prominent eliciting a strong feeling of dread throughout the entirety of the book.

While this is the most devastating coming-of-age tale that I have ever read, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a difficult read, but well worth the investment of your time.

If there is one takeaway from On the Savage Side, it’s this – Do not forget. Never forget.

A Cosmology of Monsters

A generational novel of cosmic horror by Shaun Hamill

5/5 Star Review

I am not normally lured in by cover blurbs, but this one – this is the one that got me to pick up the book:

“If John Irving ever wrote a horror novel, it would be something like this. I loved it.” —Stephen King

If there is one element of story I think of when I think of both Stephen King and John Irving, it would have to be character narrative. Both authors have an incredible talent for creating characters that are people you know, or have known. They are friends, lovers, acquaintances, family members. As it would turn out, A Cosmology of Monsters completely lives up to the comparison.

In my opinion, Monsters is, at its heart, a generational family drama with elements of cosmic horror and weird fiction woven throughout the narrative. I came for the characters and stayed for the horror. You should know that going in. If you are taking the plunge and are expecting a straight horror story, you may be disappointed. This is a slow-burn. If you enjoyed King’s Revival or Duma Key – this would be a book you would absolutely love. It’s a novel that takes its time, but as it unfurls it is so very, very good!

Noah Turner is our narrator and the book is broken up into four parts – The story of Noah’s parents and the story of Noah’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We follow the family’s highs and lows as they revolve around the designs of a great haunted house that grows from a front yard set-up to a full-size attraction called, The Wandering Dark. The family experiences loss and heartbreak and as the reader, we are there for every moment. Throughout, there are glimpses of the weird, the abnormal, and every taste leaves you wanting to know more. I hesitate to say anything else as this is a book I think you should walk into blind.

A Cosmology of Monsters is the number one contender for the best novel that I have read so far in 2020. It’s going to take to take a real doozy to unseat this one, but even then, I don’t think anything could drop if from my Top 5. If you like weird fiction or quiet, literary horror – you are doing yourself a disservice if you let this one go by without a read.

Fever Dream

A surreal novella by Samanta Schweblin and translated by Megan McDowell

4/5 Star Review

It’s nearly the end of September and I am wrapping up the month-long anniversary celebration for The Ladies of Horror Fiction. This lovely team celebrated their first full year of spotlighting the amazing ladies of horror! There was a read-a-thon taking place for the entire month and it featured five different reading challenges – check out this link for the details!

I read Fever Dream for Challenge #3 – Read a Book by a POC (Person of Color). This is my third “official” pick for the read-a-thon.

Fever Dream is a hallucinatory tale of a woman called Amanda who is dying in a rural clinic. At her side sits a young boy called David who pushes her to tell the story of how she arrived there.

I hesitate to say much more about the plot as this is only a novella and it is easy to give too much of the story away. Schweblin is originally from Argentina and paints that landscape clearly in a short amount of time. The tale is set in the country – an area that is still heavily reliant on traditional healers rather than modern medicine.

My only complaint, and it is minimal, is that I felt this story needed to be a little bit longer, needed a little bit more time to cook. There are ambiguous endings and there are endings that just don’t quite feel complete – this felt like the latter to me.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this cautionary tale of modern evils and the plight of those who are only beginning to understand them and their consequences. The novella is a gorgeous blend of surrealism, hallucinations, confusion, unreliable characters, and magic. This is a great little book which should be devoured in one sitting and I recommend this to those who enjoy a healthy mix of magical realism and horror.

Cry Your Way Home

A hauntingly beautiful collection by Damien Angelica Walters

5/5 Star Review

It’s September and I am still reveling in the month-long anniversary celebration for The Ladies of Horror Fiction. This lovely team is celebrating their first full year of spotlighting the amazing ladies of horror! If you would like to join in the festivities, there is a read-a-thon taking place for the entire month and it features five different reading challenges – check out this link for more details!

I read Cry Your Way Home for Challenge #1 – Read a Book by an Indie Author. This is my first “official” pick for the read-a-thon and what a way to kick it off! Damien Angelica Walters has some serious writing chops – this lovely lady can crawl under your skin, break your heart, cause you to look over your shoulder, and make you rethink your favorite childhood stories all in the breadth of less than a hundred pages. This book weighs in at 223, so you know you are in for a whirlwind of emotion and horror.

Click on the cover art to purchase from bookshop.org.

While I enjoy many different sub-genres of horror, my bread-and-butter, the horror that truly resonates with me, is the horror that is born out of emotion. It is the horror that comes from loving someone so deeply and watching them unravel, as in In the Spaces Where You Once Lived; the regret in knowing that you could have made a difference for someone, as in The Floating Girls: A Documentary; and handling the abiding grief of losing a child, as in Falling Under, Through the Dark and Umbilicus.

That being said, the stories collected in Cry Your Way Home are not all riddled with grief and heartache – far from it! This book is a well-blended mix of cosmic horror, fairy tale retellings, magical realism, and science fiction – all spun in a literary style with a dash of some seriously empowering female characters.

Cry Your Way Home is a gorgeous and mature collection of stories. I do not say this about many collections, but there is not one story in this book I didn’t enjoy. They would all be 4 and 5 star ratings if I had to go through each individually. Since finishing this, I have gone on to order the other books Ms. Walters currently has out – Paper Tigers and Sing Me Your Scars. The Dead Girls Club will be released on December 10th of this year. I highly recommend you all give this lady a read!

Bunny

A novel of splendidly weird fiction by Mona Awad

5/5 Star Review

I have seen a lot of rave reviews for Bunny and the description sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a read — and I am so glad that I did! That being said, there is so much to unpack in this book that I honestly am not even sure where to start.

Click on the banner image to purchase from bookshop.org.

Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider at Warren University, an exclusive New England school where she is working on her MFA in the Narrative Arts department. The book begins with the start of her final year, her last semester of Workshop, which she attends with four nearly interchangeable girls who all call each other Bunny. They are rarely apart; they eat miniature food and sweet treats; they praise each other’s work; they move and speak as one; they are a hive mind. Samantha is equally disgusted by them and jealous of their closeness. One day, she receives an invitation from the Bunnies – an invitation that leads her on the path to joining them in a very experimental off-campus Workshop, a way of expressing themselves beyond the written narrative.

At its heart, it’s a Mean Girls story – it’s a Heathers story, delivered allegorically, metaphorically, and at times, quite literally. Somehow Awad seamlessly blends these devices into an extremely relatable story. It’s hard to define the genre for this title any more specifically than weird fiction. Awad has masterfully blended the genres as perfectly as she has the literary devices.

I honestly think this is a book that you need to go into a little blind. To reveal much more of the plot would be to rob you of the full experience of this novel – and experience it you should! This is absolutely not a book to miss! Highly recommended!