Decomposition Book by Sara van Os

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Decomposition Book is a novel about two young women brought together when one of them finds the dead body of the other. Ava went on a camping trip with two coworkers that didn’t go as planned, and never came back. Savannah is staying in her parents’ lake house in Upstate New York, reeling from a mental breakdown caused by an incident with her best friend and trying to treat her OCD with not always ideal coping mechanisms. When Savannah mixes a bottle of wine with Ambien, she wakes up next to a dead body: Ava’s. And next to Ava’s body is a notebook filled with the story of her trip, so Savannah starts to read, and realises Ava might be the girl of her dreams.

This novel is definitely the sort of weird fiction that will work for some people and not for others. Personally, I didn’t really know what to expect from it going in, so I was pleasantly surprised by how dark it got. It is a novel that is both a queer survival in the wilderness story and a literary fiction exploration of someone with OCD, brought together through the wild plot line of finding a dead body in the woods and wanting to spend more time with that person. 

The narrative is split between Ava’s notebook recounting her time in the wilderness and Savannah’s perspective, carefully timed so you find out things about Ava around the same time Savannah does in the story. This means that it feels fairly well balanced between them, though initially Ava’s story is more gripping so I did find myself looking forward to those sections. However, as Savannah’s side develops and you see more of how OCD is affecting her in different ways (for example, in her exploration of her sexuality), then that also becomes more engrossing. I wondered how the book could end given Savannah’s fears about what would happen to her when it is discovered that she is hoarding a dead body, but I think that the ending is probably an effective way to focus more on the characters than having a narrative with lots of twists and turns.

I didn’t know that this book was about queer characters and OCD before going into it, and that would ‘ve been even more of a selling point for me. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I did choose to read Decomposition Book, for the fascinating way it combines its two narratives and how it makes them weird in a satisfying way.

Honey by Imani Thompson

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Honey is a novel about a Cambridge PhD student who starts killing men when she discovers the thrill of it. Yrsa is doing a PhD about Afropessimism, dealing with what it is like to be Black at Cambridge, and looking for something that excites her more than sleeping with mediocre men. When she finds herself opposite the Cambridge academic who her best friend believed loved her, Yrsa sees no harm in flicking a bee towards his drink. The only thing is, he’s allergic. And now Yrsa knows how it feels to kill, she wants to keep going.

This is a thrilling ride that is reminiscent of Boy Parts, basically taking the ‘woman killing men whilst not feeling bad about it’ and giving it an academic lens, as Yrsa finds herself enacting the same dynamics of power and violence that she’s meant to be unpacking in her thesis. The third person narration always follows Yrsa, but gives that slight remove from her by not being in first person which works very well to give a literary serial killer tone. The plot follows Yrsa as she gets deeper into the lies needed to keep killing, but there’s a couple of great twists that complicate that narrative and Yrsa’s motivations. There’s quite a few plot points that seem more like red herrings, designed to keep you (and Yrsa) guessing what might catch up with her.

If you like darkly comic literary fiction in the vein of other literary serial killer books, Honey is a great offering that brings commentary on race and gender in a way that complicates things rather than having easy answers. It feels like one of those books that you will end up seeing everywhere as it is very readable and has a classic ‘hot girl who might do anything’ protagonist.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

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Japanese Gothic is a novel about death and survival across two time periods, as a college student and a female samurai find themselves brought together from two very different worlds. In the present day, Lee remembers killing his roommate, but not what happened next; all he knows is that he’s now at his father’s old Japanese house, remembering his mother’s disappearance and hiding out from what happened. In 1877, Sen is a samurai who follows in her father’s footsteps, but with other samurai gone, their survival is not certain. When a doorway in the house brings Lee and Sen together, it seems like a way that they might face up to their respective problems, but there are other forces at play.

Having enjoyed Kylie Lee Baker’s Bat Eater, I was intrigued for this book and what it would bring, especially from the ambiguous title. It is quite different to Bat Eater, being far more dreamlike and with less of a defined plot. Instead, it moves between Lee and Sen’s perspectives and also between the present and their hazy memories. The two narratives came together well, which isn’t always the case with books set across two different time periods. If you were being picky, you might question Sen’s speech and actions when in the modern day, but at the same time, it would be annoying to focus too much on what felt strange to her as it isn’t that sort of ‘character out of time’ book.

The pace of the book is quite slow and then has sudden twists at the end that tie it all together. I found that the ending worked best once I had read the Author’s Note at the end, which explained how she had woven ideas of samurai alongside her own Okinawan heritage and the realities of what real samurai did, and then also how that is complicated by the history of Japanese people in America too. With that perspective in mind, the title really comes into its own, with the haunted house of the book being a classic gothic way of exploring layers of power and colonialism alongside the individual struggles of the main characters.

This book was more of a gothic novel than horror for me and I like how it manages to blend depictions of the present day and 1870s in Japan (especially as someone who isn’t the biggest fan of historical novels). It’s a good book if you like gothic that still leaves some ambiguity when it answers questions and where it isn’t always clear what is meant to be real or not.

Astronaut! by Oana Aristide

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Astronaut! is a novel about Communist Romania that blends a serial killer mystery with the story of a child who doesn’t understand the stakes involved in her actions. In Romania in 1989, a string of horrible murders happens and police detective Constantin has the job nobody wants: trying to investigate the murders even as they must be blamed on a bear. He crosses paths with Lia, a schoolgirl who just wants to draw pictures and bring the colours back to the drab, grey landscape of her life. Lia’s parents just want to survive, but their daughter is unknowingly being drawn into a a dangerous plot being planned by a neighbour.

This book is completely engrossing, painting a vivid, tense picture of Romania during the last days of Communism that highlights both the ridiculous realities of trying to investigate actual crimes under an atmosphere of state violence and the impossible position of trying to get your child to comply with laws when they have a curious, rebellious nature. Lia’s character is well-written to make you understand the injustices she feels whilst also feeling sympathy for her parents just trying to avoid prison for something their daughter does. There’s a lot of clever details, like how Lia doesn’t believe her parents’ warnings about what will happen to them if she says something inappropriate because she’s used to the casual threats of typical parents when trying to convince her to do small things like eating her dinner. It builds up a powerful tension where Lia’s increasing knowledge and awareness about the world puts her and others in danger, but is also just her growing up and learning things.

Astronaut! is a gripping story, but for me it was also a eye-opening look into Communist Romania, which I knew little about before reading it. It is a book I’ll be recommending to people, especially those who like literary fiction that engages with a real historical time period whilst blending together genres.

I Love You Don’t Die by Jade Song

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I Love You Don’t Die is a literary fiction novel about a self-destructive young woman who surrounds herself with death to deal with her fears about those she loves. Vicky is a third gen Chinese American woman who works at a death start up, mostly hangs out with her best friend Jen, and looks on dating apps for people she can easily disappear from. Then, she mets a couple on an app who might be good for her, but their own things going on, Vicky finds herself returning to her destructive self.

This is character-driven literary fiction that explores, death, depression, and suicide, so it is very important that readers are aware of that before going in. It is the sort of book that you need to check you are in the right mindset for, especially some of the bits near the end. For a lot of the novel, not very much happens, as instead it focuses on mostly Vicky’s perspective and her destructive pessimism, but then occasionally there will be a chapter centred around another of the major characters to offer another perspective and show how Vicky’s thinking is not the whole picture. You as the reader can feel trapped in Vicky’s bad decisions, but also feel sympathy for some of the ways that she copes with things. In particular, her friendship with Jen forms a real heart of the novel, offering hope in a book that has some bleak moments, and showing how human relationships can be more complex than some people might assume.

If you’re looking for a novel that explores contemporary ideas of loneliness, love, and, death through queer characters scrambling for connection and to not destroy anything good that happens, I Love You Don’t Die might be one for you. I wasn’t quite expecting it to go as dark as it does by the end as a lot of the book has very little happening in it other than a few arguments, but it’s not that unusual for literary fiction to have that kind of rhythm.

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

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Spoiled Milk is a 1920s-set queer boarding school gothic novel about a group of upper sixth girls whose friend falls to her death. Emily is in her final year at Briarley School for Girls, a sanctuary for her and her classmates from the outside world. But when Violet, their erstwhile leader, falls to her death, they want answers, but as they start to investigate, it seems that things are rotten at Briarley, and the school isn’t going to let them go.

I’d heard quite a bit of hype about this novel so I was excited to read it, and it fits into the ‘cursed vibes England’ niche that I’d imagined it would, making you think of Julia Armfield and Alison Rumfitt. The story itself is gothic 1920s boarding school, not aimed at a YA audience even though the characters are seventeen and eighteen, and the horror starts slow and develops as the book goes on. It felt to me like it was about cycles of violence, both interpersonally in characters’ relationships and in terms of the boarding school setting and the haunted element. 

The latter two elements, the implications of the boarding school power structure and the actual malevolent force itself, are more subtext than text in the book, and I think the main thing I left the book wanting was more depth into the meaning(s) behind what happened beyond occasional allusions to the sugar trade past of the family who owned the house and gave the school its name. I think particularly because this book felt like a boarding school version of Tell Me I’m Worthless, which very much foregrounds how fascism is the haunting, I wanted a little more about how different themes in the book were part of the supernatural side.

The book is narrated by Emily, who is a biased narrator who changes opinion and doesn’t give or know the full story, and this makes for classic gothic novel assumptions as well as a bit of an exploration of queer repression. This isn’t the book for you if you’re looking for uncomplicated queer characters/romance, but instead there’s actually flawed teenagers suddenly thrown into a malevolent situation. A downside of the narrative POV is that you don’t get to see as much of the other upper sixth girls’ characters, but it suits the style of the novel and its atmosphere to have a singular perspective through which you interpret the narrative.

Overall, this is a gripping gothic novel that doesn’t always offer answers, but instead has a malevolent atmosphere and a well-captured sense of being trapped somewhere that is decaying everything in it. It perhaps wasn’t as dark as I expected—I would definitely see this as historical gothic rather than horror—but that’s not necessarily a bad thing!

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

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Almost Life is a novel about the lives two women did and could’ve led, as their love story never quite goes the right way. Erica is eighteen and in Paris for the summer before starting university, where she meets Laure by the Sacré-Cœur, a doctoral student at the Sorbonne. They are  drawn to one another and fall in love, but the summer cannot last forever, and each choice they make changes their lives in different ways.

Told both from Erica and Laure’s perspectives, this novel spans through their lives, using time jumps to show the impact of what happens in each section. Some moments were particularly powerful, like the depiction of a character with AIDS and his friends’ support, and Laure’s reflections on not having children, and the book delves deep into the idea of lives not lived, though at times this imagining feels a bit overdone, wallowing in miscommunications. I really liked some of the characterisation, for example Laure and Michel’s friendship, and how the book explores the messiness of human connection. However, it did feel like any love that Erica or Laure felt other than for each other was stated by them a lot, but not really shown in any depth, even though these relationships were meant to be very important to the plot and their own relationship with each other.

This is a sad, queer ‘what if?’ type novel that hinges a lot around miscommunications and missed chances, exploring how sometimes romantic relationships never seem to get the right opportunity. Occasionally the conceit of everything being ‘almost’ was a bit wearing for me, but generally it is an emotional novel that feels like a successor to the gay novels mentioned in the book itself.

Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami

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Sisters in Yellow is a novel about friendship, betrayal, and crime on the streets of Tokyo. Hana is a teenager bored of school and fed up of her absent mother who works at a bar. When Kimiko, her mother’s friend, appears in Hana’s life, she offers an escape in the form of a new bar she’s setting up, Lemon. Now Hana has purpose, with a focus on making money with her new friends, but how far will she have to go to make and keep that wealth, and what will she think looking back on it all twenty years later, having discovered Kimiko was on trial?

I really didn’t know what to expect from this book, but having read several of Kawakami’s other novels, I wanted to give it a go. It turned out to be very much up my street in that it is really a literary take on a slow burn underworld story of crime, luck, and betrayal. Despite being quite a long book, I felt gripped throughout. It shows an almost mundane seedy side to areas of Tokyo, in which petty crime can be the only way to survive when you don’t have things like an ID or a bank account. Some of the things that happen seem larger than life, but the focus is on the characters, their mistakes, and the stories they tell themselves to justify what their actions.

This isn’t a book for anyone looking for fast-paced narrative, neat answers to questions of perspective, or likeable characters, but instead, it combines the messiness of women on the margins looking for community and safety with the world of hostess clubs and minor criminals. It felt really quite distinctive.

Lean Cat, Savage Cat by Lauren J. Joseph

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Lean Cat, Savage Cat is a novel about a woman who moves to Berlin after art school and falls for a musician in a world of parties, drugs, and obsession. Charli meets Alexander Geist, charismatic up-and-coming musician, in London and decides on a whim to move to Berlin with him. There, she falls in with old friends, but becomes increasingly obsessed with Alexander as they move between parties, and as Alexander’s success grows, Charli finds herself losing herself to him.

Having read Lauren J. Joseph’s previous novel, I would’ve read this one regardless of what it was about, but in fact, the summary was right up my street: Berlin, rock stars, and a comparison to The Talented Mr Ripley that I should’ve remembered whilst reading. The novel has a faded glamour updated for the 21st century, with Charli the party girl who, as someone in the novel remarks, talks like a character in The Secret History, and who is fascinated by Berlin of the 1970s, Bowie and Romy Haag. You are immersed in the world as you would be in an Isherwood novel, but at the same time, there’s a concurrent narrative that gives hints that things aren’t all quite right. It’s hard to talk more about the plot without giving anything away, so I won’t.

There’s so much about queerness, sex, gender, fame, and the self in this book, but the reading experience is a rollercoaster of parties, gossip, and a hint of danger. I love how the real life figures of David Bowie and Romy Haag hang over the novel, all part of the doubling that takes place throughout. By combining contemporary and 20th century Berlin in this doubling, Lauren J. Joseph makes a book that feels timeless and exciting.

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang

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A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a novel about intergenerational trauma told through a magical realist lens, as a woman reunites with her absent father only to learn more about his and his mother’s pasts in China. Qianze works in a high-powered accountancy job in New York City, but when her father appears back at the family home he walked out of on her fourteenth birthday, she is suddenly pulled back into the feelings brought up when he left. But her father is there to try and tell her a prophecy he can barely remember, and in the process, he shares more about his own past during the Cultural Revolution in China and his mother’s experiences under the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.

This is a dark and sprawling novel, set across three generations but in a way that intertwines them and never makes it difficult to know what is meant to be going on in each time period as some intergenerational novels can do. The narrative has a very slow burn start and for a long time, you’re not quite sure where it is going to go or if anything will happen, but by the later part of the novel, it is difficult to put down, unfolding horrifying things and using magical realism to explore the trauma that reverberates from them. The relationships between parents and children are also central to the novel, not just in the passing on of trauma, but also in the complexities of relationships, especially under the stresses of colonialism and poverty. There is a lot to take in, but the novel still ends with something hopeful.

A powerful debut, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a book that I think will be difficult to forget. Around the middle of the book I did find myself struggling to get through it, but soon the pace picked up and the book revealed a lot of its darkness. I don’t know much about China’s history and this novel is a fascinating look into it as well as the story of a Chinese American woman reckoning with that history and her distance and connection to it.