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Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'
The Trees Grew Because I Bled There: Collected Stories by Eric LaRocca
6 reviews
jessereadsthings's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Mostly just boring unfortunately.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Kidnapping, Incest, and Domestic abuse
Minor: Child death and Adult/minor relationship
katam's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Death, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Gore, Blood, Body horror, Domestic abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Mental illness, and Cancer
saint_eleanor's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Yep, every story in here made my skin crawl. Particularly the 'You Shouldn't be Here' , and 'the strange thing we become' , and the title story. I think some of these are set in the same town as "Everything the Darkness Eats" (which i actually didn't really like) in Henley's Edge. But i could be imagining that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture and Gore
Moderate: Child abuse and Domestic abuse
shirtypantser's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
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
3.75
The forward over-sold the book, to the point where I almost quit after the first story. Overall, it was interesting though the themes are pretty repetitive. It's interesting and I'd consider reading it again. Many of the stories require a suspension of disbelief and I was on board for most of it. One story in particular took me out of it though, in a way I really hated. I can think of 3 different ways off the top of my head to fix the story, but neither the author nor the editor could be bothered? A man gives a young girl some shoes. When she puts her foot in them, there is a concealed viper that bites her and she dies. How does she not feel the weight of it when setting her shoes down? Or if it crawled in, how does it not take up the entire shoe? It's a child's shoe! The viper could have been in the father's backpack... if you haven' t read it this will make no sense, but there were better options than a kid's 6.5 size shoe. It reeks of poor writing and editing.
Never thought I would need it, but there should be an autocannabalism trigger.
Never thought I would need it, but there should be an autocannabalism trigger.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cannibalism, Domestic abuse, and Emotional abuse
rosage's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
every time i pick up one of their books i don’t know what to expect. this has to be my favorite collection of his to date. the tales of love and loss through gross and gruesome stories pulls at your heart as well as leaving you questioning what you just read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Death, Body horror, Blood, Terminal illness, Suicide, Violence, Gore, Grief, Abandonment, Cancer, Pregnancy, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Cancer, Cannibalism, Grief, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Body horror, Death, Dementia, Gore, Torture, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, and Infidelity
readthesparrow's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-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
2.25
(I was provided a digital review copy by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for a review.)
I really wanted to like this collection. This was my first introduction to LaRocca, and while I had heard conflicting opinions in horror circles (you either love his work or really don't), I was pretty sure I'd fall into the camp of enjoying it. I usually like horror authors whose work is controversial and style bizarre. However, while LaRocca's collection voice in this collection was certainly strong, elements of it such as the use of metaphor and line pacing were obtrusive or distracting from the tension, character, and thematics that otherwise were so strong.
The reason why I want to talk about voice in this collection is because the introduction, written by Chuck Wendig, waxes poetic about how strong LaRocca's voice is. Wendig claims that LaRocca's voice is so strong because he has empathy for his characters, because his stories revolve around queerness and sacrifice and transformation and viscera. "The dark magic at the core of this collection," Wendig says as the introduction comes to an end, is from a "sentence found in the titular tale of the collection: Anything that's worth doing always hurts."
I do agree with Wendig on his analysis of LaRocca's work. If not for the strong thematics, his care in portraying his characters, and the visceral imagery LaRocca just knows how to present, I would have probably DNF'd this collection. The sticking point here is the prose.
I don't like LaRocca's prose. I'm sorry, but it really turned me off. Usually I love purple prose and indulgent descriptions, especially in short stories, especially when that prose is more blood red than purple. But I think my thoughts can best be summed up by a note I made while reading the short story "You're Not Supposed to Be Here": My god would it kill you to write a paragraph without a metaphor? Once I noticed how many metaphors LaRocca uses--and never short and sweet ones--I couldn't not notice and be annoyed. I counted over 110 metaphors; the book is 147 pages total, with 115 of those pages being the actual short stories. That's around a metaphor a page; in some sections, there would be multiple metaphors per page.
And, look, again, I love a good metaphor. I wouldn't even say any of the metaphors were necessarily bad. They were all evocative, all clear, but a lot of them were just a little too much.
For example, in "The Strange Thing We Become," the scene with the Morse code machine (page 50 in my review copy) has seven metaphors and similes. Seven! At some point it's fluff. It's distracting. I don't need to know that "the machine chirped like a furious sparrow," just say that it chirped. The word chirped is doing enough lifting there! All those metaphors are exhausting. They're annoying. They're intrusive, and not in a good creepy horror way, in a "please just get to the point dear God" type way.
If the prose was improved, this collection could have been a 3-4 star read. As it is, the metaphors crop up everywhere in the prose like the mycelium of an invasive species of fungus rendering the prose more difficult to read than something black and white and red all over and more unevenly paced than a horse with five legs.
I have another book of his. I dearly hope that either those metaphors have been pruned over the years or his style has changed, because if not I'll be very sad because I very much would like to enjoy his work.
I really wanted to like this collection. This was my first introduction to LaRocca, and while I had heard conflicting opinions in horror circles (you either love his work or really don't), I was pretty sure I'd fall into the camp of enjoying it. I usually like horror authors whose work is controversial and style bizarre. However, while LaRocca's collection voice in this collection was certainly strong, elements of it such as the use of metaphor and line pacing were obtrusive or distracting from the tension, character, and thematics that otherwise were so strong.
The reason why I want to talk about voice in this collection is because the introduction, written by Chuck Wendig, waxes poetic about how strong LaRocca's voice is. Wendig claims that LaRocca's voice is so strong because he has empathy for his characters, because his stories revolve around queerness and sacrifice and transformation and viscera. "The dark magic at the core of this collection," Wendig says as the introduction comes to an end, is from a "sentence found in the titular tale of the collection: Anything that's worth doing always hurts."
I do agree with Wendig on his analysis of LaRocca's work. If not for the strong thematics, his care in portraying his characters, and the visceral imagery LaRocca just knows how to present, I would have probably DNF'd this collection. The sticking point here is the prose.
I don't like LaRocca's prose. I'm sorry, but it really turned me off. Usually I love purple prose and indulgent descriptions, especially in short stories, especially when that prose is more blood red than purple. But I think my thoughts can best be summed up by a note I made while reading the short story "You're Not Supposed to Be Here": My god would it kill you to write a paragraph without a metaphor? Once I noticed how many metaphors LaRocca uses--and never short and sweet ones--I couldn't not notice and be annoyed. I counted over 110 metaphors; the book is 147 pages total, with 115 of those pages being the actual short stories. That's around a metaphor a page; in some sections, there would be multiple metaphors per page.
And, look, again, I love a good metaphor. I wouldn't even say any of the metaphors were necessarily bad. They were all evocative, all clear, but a lot of them were just a little too much.
For example, in "The Strange Thing We Become," the scene with the Morse code machine (page 50 in my review copy) has seven metaphors and similes. Seven! At some point it's fluff. It's distracting. I don't need to know that "the machine chirped like a furious sparrow," just say that it chirped. The word chirped is doing enough lifting there! All those metaphors are exhausting. They're annoying. They're intrusive, and not in a good creepy horror way, in a "please just get to the point dear God" type way.
If the prose was improved, this collection could have been a 3-4 star read. As it is, the metaphors crop up everywhere in the prose like the mycelium of an invasive species of fungus rendering the prose more difficult to read than something black and white and red all over and more unevenly paced than a horse with five legs.
I have another book of his. I dearly hope that either those metaphors have been pruned over the years or his style has changed, because if not I'll be very sad because I very much would like to enjoy his work.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Self harm, Violence, Gore, Death, Death of parent, Abortion, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Cancer, Grief, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Dementia, Infertility, Physical abuse, and Incest
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