Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Tell Me I'm Worthless

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

242 reviews

bookswithallison's review

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dark

3.0

Content Warnings

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“The House swallowed her, and inside it she found that she wasn’t alone. There were hundreds of girls buried within… Martyred girls, mutilated girls, girls that [she] thought, in her darkest moments, deserved what they had gotten. They all huddled close to one another for warmth. “A glad day will come,” one of them said… We are all here now. We wait for you. Irreversibly damaged.”

TITLE—Tell Me I’m Worthless

AUTHOR—Alison Rumfitt

PUBLISHED—2021

PUBLISHER—Nightfire (Tor Publishing Group)

GENRE—horror

SETTING—modern UK

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—fascism & bigotry (esp. transphobia & antisemitism), sentient/haunted house, trans MC, white supremacist villains, spiritual craftwork, TERFs, internalized transphobia & self-loathing, indoctrination/radicalisation & manipulation, sex work, Haunting of Hill House homage, Bluebeard & other dark fairy tales, abuse & trauma, drug use & house parties, fetishes, forgiveness

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—The explicit inspiration taken from Shirley Jackson’s HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and all the chosen epigraphs were really excellent and used to exceptional effect.

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Once you have broken one social norm, well, what comes next really, oh, what comes next…”

PREMISE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

EXECUTION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“No live organism can continue to exist compassionately under conditions of absolute fascism… I first read The Haunting of Hill House when I was sixteen, and I’ve never been able to think about haunting since then in a way that didn’t align with that book’s idea of a fundamentally demented place onto which you latch. Our house, my house, her house, was not like Hill House… Hill House was, I think, an apolitical animal. Our house was not. It had a system of beliefs. And those who walked there marched as one faceless mass.”

My thoughts:

This might end up being my favorite read of *the whole year* so I want to make sure that I’m being very intentional with my review of it here since I know I don’t have a lot of followers who are also horror genre fans... 😆

First of all I want to be clear that this book is written as a part of the horror genre and it truly, truly belongs there. 👀 While my review is going to be an absolute rave I cannot stress enough that unless you already appreciate the horror genre style of writing and usual content, and can properly sit with it 👀, this book will not be to you what it was to me. I promise. It is an absolutely, literally horrifying read. (In the acknowledgements Rumfitt says that she actually thought this book was “unpublishable” and thanked her publisher for actually publishing it and yeah that… that makes sense. 😅)

Now. That said. This book was *incredible.* This is easily one of the most important books I’ve ever read. Rumfitt tackled so many heavy topics in a way that was brutally honest and wrapped in some of the most upsetting imagery I have ever encountered in literature but which she used to make her point so effectively and so emphatically that by the end of the book all I could do was applaud.

Rumfitt is truly a phenom of a writer and definitely an autobuy author for me going forward. A thousand thank yous to IG:@night_worms for including this book in their February package this year. 🙏🏻💕

That’s all I’m going to say about it but check out the main themes/subjects I listed above and the CWs, obviously, oh! and there’s actually a fantastic review on goodreads by user: s.penkevich that breaks down the literary masterfullness of this book way better than I can so check that out as well. Also check out the one-star reviews because they will give you an idea of what you’re in for. 👀

Link to s.penkevich’s review on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4426885157

I would recommend this book to readers who can a) enjoy the horror genre and b) want to read one of the most explosive and impactful books about fascism and the trans experience they will ever read. This book is best read gently—giving yourself enough time and space to set aside, process, and resume as needed. 👀

Final note: Please take the CWs/TWs very seriously before coming to this book—I cannot stress that enough. 🙏🏻

“I thought I forgave you, Ila my love, but I’m not so sure. Now kiss me hard on the mouth… Ila grabs my hand and pulls me one last time into the dark.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CW // all of them but especially, very graphic: sexual content (the most graphic of them all), transphobia, antisemitism, rape, suicide, self harm, body horror (PLEASE feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, by Shirley Jackson
SISTER OUTSIDER, by Audre Lorde
IN THE DREAM HOUSE, by Carmen Maria Machado—TBR
SHE IS A HAUNTING, by Trang Thanh Tran
WHITE IS FOR WITCHING, by Helen Oyeyemi
BABEL, by RF Kuang
THE NESTING, by CJ Cooke

Favorite Quotes—

“Rooms sit and stew. They take in the things you do in them. Their walls soak up every action you take between them, and those actions become part of the bricks and the plaster.”

“Why open the door? Why did you need to see what was in there?”

“I have to believe that other people have also experienced impossible, horrible things. I have to know that there are people who would understand if I talked to them. I have to know. I have to believe that my trauma is relatable, if controversial, that there are people who would listen to me and go, it’s okay Alice, it’s completely okay. You are so fucking normal. Everything you’ve experienced is normal.”

“…he cannot come near me, because I know to lay very, very still, because I have placed the right sigils in the right places…”

“Not that the symbolic is of no use, of course. The symbolic can be vital, the symbolic can evict or restore power. Symbols hold a shocking potential energy deep within, sometimes not evoked for generations upon generations.”

“…here’s what you want but not how you want it, here’s what you want me to do but I do it all wrong.”

“The possibility that… even worse, that her memory was false, and there was something even more horrific beneath.”

“The most famous haunted places in the world tend to be the big houses and castles, because rich people lived in them and the collective blood on their hands, the collective violence that they caused on everybody else in the world, manifests into ghosts.”

“Bigotry can sit inside of you, hardening, turning into something painful before you even realize it is there… Radicalisation is a complicated thing.”

“In the mirror Ila can see that she is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her traumas sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. I can see you there. I know you are inside.”

“Sometimes, at the end of everything, the only option you have is to make it worse.”

“Is it clear how all of this works? How easy it is to slip, unthinking, into ways that the House wants you to be?”

“They both slept badly. When dreams came, they were jagged things, pressing themselves close until they came away bloody.”

“No live organism can continue to exist compassionately under conditions of absolute fascism… Albion, not compassionate, not sane, stood ringed by a tangled forest, holding inside, however messily, its overpowering ideology; it had stood so for a hundred years but would only stand for one more before it entered into the long process of becoming something else, at the end of which it was hoped it would seem to all the world that it had always been that way. Within, floors crumbled, ceilings gaped open, vines choked the chimneys and the windows. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of the house, and whatever walked there marched on Rome.”

“…inside the room is the pain you know, outside the room is the pain you do not know…”

“Memory is a difficult thing to navigate, especially traumatic memory. It splinters. You can cut yourself on the edges of it so easily.”

“…obviously this is a disgusting way to think but it is how she thinks…”

“You didn’t make him do it, but he let you in.”

“…we never left this House. That’s the truth of it. Sure, we stumbled out into the light of day, but enough of us stayed within, and enough of it stayed within us, that there was no real escape at all.”

“It keeps you alive. It makes you feel safe.”

“…both God’s own country and a godless place…”

“Once you have broken one social norm, well, what comes next really, oh, what comes next…”

“…she became part of the system just to survive…”

“…and I choke but I do not choke to death…”

quote from Sean Bonney: “Everything that’s happened since has been / a dream. A deep and horrible dream. / Wake up. For the sake of us all, wake up.”

“And the world comes crashing down around them. Maybe they’ll be okay. Do you think they’ll be okay, in the end? I think they will be. I have to think they will be.”

Content Warnings

ericarobyn's review

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dark tense slow-paced

2.0

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt is a horribly bleak story told from various perspectives that are all linked in the darkness of a past that won’t let them go.

Content Warning:
This is one of the darkest books, centered around fascism and trauma. The author has a wonderful warning at the start. For my full list of content warnings below.

Three years after a traumatic event in an old house, two individuals struggle with trying to overcome the past. Spirilng, rather than healing, they soon realize there’s only one way out of this… they have to go back to the house.

A slow, rambling tale told from various perspectives, we have:

Alice – Told in the first person. Alice struggles with finding a place to settle as the atmosphere of each place slowly starts to become too much. Alice tells one story after another, slowly revealing her traumas and struggles as she continues to recall the past and tries to outrun her ghosts.
Ila – Told in the third person. Ila is determined to get involved in anti-trans groups. She has a hard time moving forward trying to find herself as so much of her thoughts are stuck in the past.
Hannah – A friend of the first two who just wanted to be seen and respected by her friends. Unwaveringly loyal, even when she saw the red flags, she went along with her friends' plans anyway.
House – The house has a long history, but the house doesn’t care about the past like the two others, instead, the house just wants the two back inside it now.

Reading Part One, which spans the first half of the book, from Alice and Ila’s perspectives, felt like dealing with two friends that are fighting and each of them are trying to turn you against the other. Now you’ve seen the cracks in both of their stories and arguments, and you can’t believe either of them because of how unreliable they are.

Part Two gives us some much-needed backstory as we jump back in time to see the traumas each have been trying to live through within the first half of the book. And boy, are these traumas brutal.

Part Three brings the two friends back together, for better or for worse. But is what they’re about to do going to help or hurt?

There are so many dark elements that were woven into the text here. Terrible things like transphobia, homophobia, wicked violence, and much more. Just one very small element that was displayed was the toxicity of social media and the internet in general when used for harm.

An all-around dark, depressing, and brutal story that doesn’t hold back with the raw, real-world horrors.

My Favorite Passages from Tell Me I’m Worthless

There was a thick fog in the air. When cars and trucks shot passed, down the road, their headlights looked like the eyes of ghosts.

Haunted houses are rarely neat. If the House was truly haunted, then that haunting spilled out of its broken or boarded up windows, soaking into the fertile earth around it. The trees still grow, but the squirrels in their branches often feel the sudden need to bite each other in the eyes.

In the mirror lla can see that she is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her traumas sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.

Now, if three girls enter a house and only two leave, who is to blame?
And if both girls tell a different story, but you read online that you have to BELIEVE WOMEN, what do you?

Memory is a difficult thing to navigate, especially traumatic memory. It splinters. You can cut yourself on the edges of it so easily.

My Final Thoughts on Tell Me I’m Worthless

Reading this felt a bit like walking in the dark house, complete with twisted hallways that suddenly split, sending you on a new path feeling bewildered, sad, and angry.

For readers of the extreme that don’t mind very, very dark, and upsetting tales, this one will be a good fit for you. However, I cannot stress this enough, this is a book to tread lightly with. If you are easily impacted by darkness, this may not be a good fit for you.

Content Warnings

bayleaff's review against another edition

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dark

2.75

I have mixed feelings about this one. It was way darker than I expected, with elements of classic gothic fiction meshing with lots of body horror and political discourse. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did an amazing job bringing the horror element to life, but it also felt a little bit like spending hours and hours in the worst parts of the internet. There were some parts that were very stream-of-consciousness in a way that almost worked, but mostly felt overdone and repetitive and like the author accidentally copied and pasted a blog post in the middle of the book. Ultimately, while I appreciate what the author was trying to do, the gratuitous violence and hatred outweighed everything else and I didn't end up liking this one very much. (The trigger warnings are listed at the beginning of the book, but be aware that they are hit pretty much constantly.)

Content Warnings

tulilipz's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

i cannot say that i recommend this book unless you are 2000% sure that you can handle the very long list of trigger warnings. be aware that this book is full of hate, i cannot describe it in any other way, and the sexual content including the rape scenes are explicit and graphic.

this isn’t your typical haunted house story, despite the book being marketed as one. i guess it’s mostly about the aftermath of having been inside a haunted house, if that makes any sense. personally, i found the writing style too chaotic and messy for my liking, but i know that some people would disagree. so if you want to read this book, do it, but be cautious.

Content Warnings

thor's review

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

amysrrls's review

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Haunted house, queer characters, political allegories, social issues commentary……… 100% yes! Love the stream of consciousness/poetic prose. This is definitely a heavy book (heed the CWs!!!) but relevant, relatable, and important. I understand this isn’t a book for everyone, but if you like horror, stuff that makes you squirm, and commentary on fascism and capitalism…. You’ll love it. (Only 4.75 bc there were a few typos!!)

Content Warnings

tigger89's review

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a deeply unpleasant read. Not bad, but viscerally uncomfortable, with no semblance of thrill when the suspense breaks, only a sense of relief. The author, a trans woman herself, pulls no punches when it comes to depicting transphobia(and, to a lesser degree, racism and antisemitism), to the point where I felt myself thinking okay, I get it now, you can stop…oh my god please stop. I originally intended to mention this as a negative, but the more I sat with that feeling, the more I think it was Rumfitt's intent to make the reader feel that way. It would have been too easy to throw out something shocking and then stop. But that's not how bigotry works, right? It doesn't slap you in the face and then just stop. It slaps you in the face and then it knees you in the gut, punches your head, now you're on the floor, can't even get your breath back between each strike. It persists long after you're done with it, refusing to let up even if you beg.

So maybe that's why she chose to write that way, with the repetitive stream-of-consciousness rants that stretched on for pages after the point where I wanted so badly for them to stop. Or maybe I'm just making up justifications, because it feels better to say I had a transgressive art experience than to say I read a bunch of horrible thoughts and was uncomfortable the whole time. Regardless, this is a book best encountered when you're mentally secure and able to grapple with the unpleasant truths it brings to light, because at its core this book isn't about a haunted house, or a trans woman, or her Pakistani-Jewish ex-friend. Rather, it's about fascism: how it perpetuates itself and what's necessary to defeat it. As I was reading, I was strongly reminded of some of Contrapoints's darker, bad-trip youtube videos. It had that same juxtaposition of ugly darkness with laugh-so-you-don't-drink-yourself-to-sleep-tonight stabs of humor. It's certainly not going to be to everybody's tastes.

The only thing I would highlight as a true negative is that I had a difficult time following the narration at times. It got better as I got used to the author's style, but in the early chapters I'd often find myself confused when the narration would step outside of Ila's(or Alice's) mind and start narrating omnipresently, or from the point of view of another character. But by the time I got to the middle of the book I'd gotten used to it, and didn't have much of a problem with it anymore.

Content Warnings

gorejoyous's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

kirsty_lairdmichette's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

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