Author: fiendfullyreading

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

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Model Home is a novel about three siblings and what happened in their seemingly ideal gated home. Ezri grew up in Texas with their two sisters, Eve and Emmanuel, in a McMansion their parents were proud to own, even in such a White community. When their parents are found dead in the house, Ezri and their sisters must face the haunted childhoods they spent there, and their blame on the house and their parents for keeping them there, because sometimes the what haunts us isn’t always what we think.

I was excited to read a new book by Rivers Solomon and this one didn’t disappoint, combining a complex family relationship and a classic haunted house premise with ideas of memory, justice, and recovery. The chapters are mostly told from Ezri’s perspective, with some from others’ points of view, and it works well to make it hard to work out exactly what people know and what memories might mean. The plot is quite like a horror story, and is split between the past and the present to explore what it was like for the siblings to live in the house as well as the present events, but the book also plays with these ideas of haunting, and what kinds of harms might be out there.

The characters are rich and well-realised, even shown through mostly Ezri’s perspective, and I like how details about them are slowly revealed rather than told to us straightaway. There’s also a lot of character detail that feels very real, like diabetic characters taking insulin and checking their blood sugar, and characters are allowed to be messy, complicated people without it needing to have a plot reason. I liked the relationship between Ezri and their daughter, and the complexity of not always being able to be the parent a child might need, and also how various parent-child relationships in the book showed how these can change over generations and there can be new models of parenting. Model Home is very much about family relationships and the ways that these can haunt, as well as how choices made by family impact each other.

There’s plenty more packed into the book as well, as it plays with expectations about what kind of story it is, and it defies easy categorisation, but is just a book that explores memory, haunting, family, race, and belonging whilst having a gripping plot about a house that reminds the siblings of a terrible past.

Woodworking by Emily St. James

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Woodworking is a novel about being trans in small town America, as two trans women with little else in common become friends. Erica is thirty-five and recently divorced, a high school teacher who directs community theater and seemingly doesn’t have much else on. She also knows she is a trans woman, but nobody else in the town does, until she tells Abigail, the school’s only trans student. Abigail lives with her sister after her parents threw her out and beneath her tough exterior, she might just need Erica’s friendship as much as Erica needs hers.

I’m not a fan of unlikely friendship novels, which tend to be trying too hard to be inspiring and end up bland and twee, but Woodworking is very much unlike those. I’d heard about the book so wanted to read it, and I’m really glad I did, as I love how it combines different genres of fiction that have been used to tell trans stories—the kind of thirtysomething divorce story and a young adult novel—into one book exploring the different experiences of different women, trans and cis. The narrative moves between Abigail’s first person point of view and a third person narrator focused on Erica (with another voice later on that it would be too revealing to describe) and this gives a sense of the differences between them and their outlooks, but also where they have similar needs for community with other women, both trans women and cis women.

Another thing I really liked about Woodworking was the fact that characters are allowed to be flawed: messy, annoying, selfish, etc. In particular, reading Abigail’s first person perspective as an adult can be frustrating, because St. James writes her very much as a teenager who has adopted certain defensiveness to survive, which is reflected in her tone. Both protagonists get frustrated and lash out at people, make bad choices, and even by the end, are still just trying to work out what futures they might have. Some people might not like this messiness, wanting characters who don’t do “bad things”, but it felt very fitting for a novel about different kinds of friendship and mentorship and the fact that these things aren’t linear. To draw out the obvious point of the novel, Erica is thirty-five and needs to advice of a seventeen-year-old who already knows about things like trans support groups and coming out, but both characters need each other and many of the other characters in the book to see a future in which they don’t have to hide.

I loved Woodworking and the way it explores ideas of hiding, existing, and community with gripping, messy characters. It is like if you crossed Detransition, Baby with a young adult novel about a teenage trans girl trying to balance rebellion and fitting in, and focused on the intersection between them.

Deviants by Santanu Bhattacharya

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Deviants is a novel about three generations of gay men in India and the ways in which people are shaped by the time they live. Vivaan is a gay teenager in India’s Silicon Plateau, and whilst his parents are supportive, they don’t know about the online life he leads, in which sex and love aren’t simple. His uncle Mambro’s experience of being gay is very different, having grown up during a period when a colonial-era law prosecuting homosexuality was constantly being wielded, even as people in India fought to repeal it. And Mambro’s uncle, Sukumar, was born in a time when he had no option, and his love for another man must be hidden, as he struggled to find a place for himself without hurting others.

This is a cleverly structured novel that is very powerful, with each chapter moving between the three stories and each narrative told with a different voice. Through this structure, it is easy to become immersed in all three stories and their connections and differences, which isn’t always possible with a novel telling three parallel stories. Vivaan’s voice notes are confessional, whereas Mambro’s story is at a second-person remove, and Sukumar’s is told in third person narration, and al of these suit the characters and their stories as well as serving to make them distinctive from each other. The three characters struggle with many of the same things, but also specific issues to their time, and particularly Vivaan’s story takes a more futuristic approach to what intimacy might mean in new ways, that offer opportunity and peril.

Deviants is sad and humorous at once, balancing the three characters well to create a powerful exploration of being gay in India over the past decades. 

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

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Disappoint Me is a novel about relationships and growing up, as a thirty year old trans woman  meets a new guy and navigates a more heteronormative life. Max works as a lawyer for a tech company, doing what their AI tool actually can’t, and after a New Year’s party ends with her falling down some stairs, she’s looking for more stability. She meets Vincent, a corporate lawyer who is sweet and caring, even if a lot of his life feels unlike Max’s. Looming is Max’s friend’s wedding, in which she’s a bridesmaid, but a health scare and a secret from Vincent’s past push that to the background, and Max must face up to what her future might actually hold.

Having loved Bellies, I was excited to read Dinan’s next book, and Disappoint Me has a lot of similarities, focusing on characters’ emotions and relationships, and navigating acting in ways that are or aren’t see as ‘normal’. In her second novel, Dinan focuses on ideas of where to go next, what happens after. The protagonist, Max, is thirty and watches as people suddenly start focusing on weddings and babies, or being obsessed with their jobs as an alternative. The book considers what kind of future there might be, especially for a heterosexual trans woman whose job doesn’t challenge her and whose future as a poet didn’t seem to go anywhere. There’s a sense of trying out a heteronormative life, with some hilarious touches like that her boyfriend Vincent loves bringing up that he’s read Detransition, Baby whenever talk turns to parenting, and this novel in general does feel like it follows on not only from Dinan’s debut but other talked-about trans literary fiction like Detransition, Baby, exploring a world in which cis straight people have also read these novels.

Given the title, I did start fearing partway through that Disappoint Me‘s ending was going to be too bleak, but actually it is more ambivalent and purposefully ambiguous, showing the difficulty in seeing anything as an ending when the world always keeps going regardless. There’s a lot of things that are thrown up in the novel and don’t really get resolved, but again, as the book is trying to capture the fact that life keeps going on, and what that means when you’re trying to work out your own life, this feels purposeful. The characters are messy, but as the ending tries to highlight, people aren’t perfect and you can still love people when they mess up, and part of getting older is realising this.

Blob by Maggie Su

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Blob is a novel about a woman who meets a blob in an alley and tries to turn it into a perfect man. Vi has dropped out of college, is still dealing with her last breakup, and works at the reception in a local hotel, where she tries to avoid talking to her friendly co-worker, Rachel. When she finally gives in to Rachel and goes out with her to a drag club, Vi finds a blob in an alley. Intrigued, she takes it home, where it eats cereal and watches TV, and soon Vi realises she can shape the blob as she wants, so she tells the blob to become an attractive man. However, even the blob resists Vi’s control, and she has to face the fact she might have to stop running away from everything.

The blob concept is such a fun one for a novel and I love weird novels like this, exploring a character’s constant fucking things up through the lens of something strange. Vi feels like a outsider everywhere and protects herself by ruining things or avoiding what she really wants, and the blob appears as an easy way out, until she realises that it isn’t, because the blob becomes Bob, who has autonomy and doesn’t want to do what she does. It’s like using Frankenstein as a chance to realise you have to actually take control of your life and be better to other people, rather than not putting the work in with them. The narrative does actually give Vi a chance to change, and it’s a charming take on a coming of age story.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

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Natural Beauty is a novel about the luxury beauty industry, being an outsider, and what it means to make something beautiful. The protagonist was a promising piano player, studying at the Conservatory to the delight of her parents who fled China during the Cultural Revolution, until an accident left them in a medical facility and her unable to play. When she is offered a job at Holistik, a beauty company that offers cutting-edge treatments for a high price, it is an opportunity not only to pay her parents’ medical bills, but to gain access to the world she couldn’t join through piano playing. As she becomes entranced by a new friend and her body starts to change thanks to Holistik’s products, she starts to realise that there’s a price being paid for what Holistik and its sister companies are doing.

This book is a combination of body horror and literary fiction with dystopian thriller elements, using this to explore the wellness and beauty industry as a concept, ideas of perfection in beauty and art, and personal experiences of immigration and race. It’s both satirical and not, as good body horror often is, and there’s a lot of little details that aren’t as explored as the main narrative, but are fascinating too (like the owner of the company also making money from a body modification business because alongside the ‘culture’ of beauty and wellness there’s always a ‘counter-culture’).

The unnamed protagonist tumbles down the rabbit hole whilst the reader is faced with knowing it isn’t going to go well, seeing the warning signs she misses. Her story highlights how the beauty industry often preys on people who need solutions to other problems in their lives, but also how when someone is desperate it is easy to not see things that don’t seem quite right. The parts of the book in which she’s thinking about music and the need for dissonance and harshness were some of my favourite parts, and beyond the obvious parallel with beauty, it also shines a light on ideas of who plays music and what they should look and seem like.

Natural Beauty is a gripping descent into a dystopian world of body horror. You can really picture it being adapted into a film that would sit well alongside a lot of recent films, not just in terms of the concept but in the fluid, hazy way it unfolds.

The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap

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The Resurrectionist is a historical novel about a young medical student who arrives in Edinburgh, meets an intriguing dissection assistant, and falls into the world of stealing corpses for use in medical schools. James arrives in Edinburgh to pursue his dream of attending medical school, having escaped his family’s expectations for him but lacking money after this father’s death. When he strikes a deal to attend a private anatomy school with Nye, the assistant, James finds himself drawn into an underground world of supplying dead bodies for medical schools, treading the line between scientific progress and crime, but alongside the thrill of the danger is another thrill, as James finds himself with feelings for Nye.

I tend to be selective with the historical novels I read, but this one looked interesting for the queer love story and the gruesome premise. The former element is definitely prevalent in the book, though it feels more like a young adult book in the way this is treated with vague references to what James and Nye do together. There’s a slight level of peril due to the time period and legal and social ramifications of gay relationships, but it always seems to be kept as something that’s a vague annoyance to James rather than the danger it has previously placed Nye in, which again makes it feel like a young adult novel that doesn’t quite want to delve into how it would feel to exist like that. Not that this is a bad thing, as people often want to read historical novels that aren’t just about queer misery, but in this case it is meant to be a threat, just not one that is explored.

The gruesome element isn’t really all that dark, as this book is more of a gothic-atmosphere historical novel than anything particularly scary or gritty. There’s a bit of stuff about university medical education vs practical anatomy and dissection, but otherwise the medical student is really just the background, and James’ student friends are there as plot devices as needed. Again, this works for the book as it has a simple narrative, but it never really delves more deeply into anything, being quite coy about a lot of elements (like one of two female characters, a young woman who helps out Nye and the diggers, but we never quite see what her seemingly disreputable existence actually is). There’s a lot about class, wealth, and power in the book that again isn’t really explored, and particularly the ending is very neat, ignoring these things for a happy ending that seems to set up for a potential sequel.

This is a fun book if you like light queer romance with a gothic premise, though I think the style and narrative mean it would be better suited marketed as young adult fiction (and I can think of young adult books that do delve more into the kind of material this one avoids). I enjoyed reading it, but I found the ending too easily resolved and without much emotional power, because everything seemed too easy for them. I think there will be a lot of fans of this book who enjoy the romance and the vibes, but on reflection, it wasn’t entirely for me.

At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca

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At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a new short novel from LaRocca about a hopeless man who has invented an unusual ritual for people who want to die, but also want to live a better life. Ashley Lutin has lost his wife and his son has disappeared, he struggles with the knowledge of his queerness and the queerness he saw in his son, and he’s positioned himself as an outsider who can be contacted by strangers for a strange ritual that, unbeknownst to them, involves being buried alive. However, one of these strangers tested Ashley’s carefully planned ritual and his ideas of salvation.

I’ve read a lot of Eric LaRocca’s books, and I tend to find his stories either work for me or they don’t. This one is in the former category, with a good mix of some LaRocca trademarks (weird online forums, depraved actions, grim violence) and a self-aggrandising protagonist who believes he can really change people’s lives. The writing style and layers to this book, with constant repetition of the title phrase and some stories-within-stories as internet posts, are likely to divide people, but I enjoyed how the book was almost self-obsessed with its own rituals and motifs, reflecting Ashley’s ideas and how he uses these as a way to deal with his grief and regret. Ashley’s own belief in his edginess and outsider reputation (particularly through his claiming that having face piercings makes him really weird) is also an interesting aspect and again reflects the title of the book and the certainty of the protagonist that he is loathsome.

As a fan of Dennis Cooper and books like Exquisite Corpse and Brainwyrms, I didn’t find the content particularly shocking, and it all centres around our ideas of death and life so thematically makes sense. I did think that, though I liked the almost novella length (and think LaRocca writes that kind of length well), a few of the plot elements could’ve had more depth to them, particularly the backstory of Ashley’s child, Bailey, and their relationship. Ashley’s own queerness and his reaction to Bailey’s felt like something that needed more space to really make the queer horror element of this book work. However, this is one of my favourite Eric LaRocca stories I’ve read, combining a good concept with a narrative written through a distinctive perspective, and I was glad to enjoy it after not being a big fan of Everything The Darkness Eats.

Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread by Leila Taylor

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Sick Houses is an exploration of unnerving and haunted domestic buildings, from simple family homes to imposing concrete tower blocks, and the fiction and real life that shows us these. The chapters focus on different types of architecture and spooky homes, sharing a range of examples and some of the eerie elements of these, and drawing on a range of media to look into what makes a house haunted.

I like Taylor’s approach to the idea of haunted houses, making it quite a broad term that doesn’t just cover houses with ghosts, but a range of types of ‘haunting’. There’s a lot of different material covered in the book, with a lot of examples, but I did find that it was more of a collection of different kinds of haunted homes rather than an analysis of things about them. I expected it to have more of an argument than it did, though I did like that the final chapter was Taylor’s own experiences and a sense of uncertainty around what exactly a haunting is. I’d say that it is good if you’re looking for something that shares a lot of different types of ‘sick houses’, but it is worth knowing that it isn’t an in-depth exploration of the concept of these houses and what it might mean. I think it would sit well alongside Jacob Geller’s YouTube video ‘Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House’, which takes the approach of analysing a few haunted houses more deeply, as for me that video set the bar very high for looking at the concept of a haunted house.

Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker

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Bat Eater is a novel about Asian women being killed, and one crime-scene cleaner trying to deal with the death of her sister. It’s months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, and not long ago, her sister was pushed in front of a subway train from beside her. She’s isolated from everyone, including her co-workers who also scrub blood away from the crime scenes of endless women in Chinatown, her Chinese aunt who wants her to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, and her White aunt who wants her to be a good church-going American. When a shadow seems be lurking around her, Cora starts to realise she cannot ignore what is going on.

I didn’t know what to expect from this book going in, but it turned out to be a gripping horror novel that explores the pandemic, racism, corruption, mental health, and lurking ghosts. The novel opens with the shocking death of Cora’s sister, really setting the tone for the gory, no-holds-barred story to come, full of horrible deaths and a protagonist struggling with not only grief and trauma, but also the impact of COVID-19 on her mental health as she compulsively cleans and fears contamination. The book is often heartbreaking and horrifying, but as Kylie Lee Baker’s author’s note says at the end, it also has moments of humour and comfort, particularly as Cora finds herself becoming friends with the co-workers she wanted to keep at arms’ length.

Bat Eater is a memorable take on a COVID-19 novel, twisting the serial killer genre into something filled with emotion and the horrors of both the physical and ghost world, exploring anti-Asian racism in America at the start of the pandemic. Straddling horror and thriller boundaries with ghost and serial killer elements, it is perfect for anyone who likes hard-hitting, gory fiction that doesn’t shy away from exposing the horrors of the world.