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A review by screamdogreads
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
5.0
"Have you ever experienced a haunting?"
Review updated as of Jan 22nd 2024. Read this for the second time (Jan 15th-16th '24) Enjoyed it just as much, if not more, than the first time.
When does a novel become more than just a novel? When, if ever, can it be considered art? When does it transcend everything, even itself, to become this enigmatic thing that's impossible to describe? The answer to that lies within these pages. Have you ever experienced a haunting? A question that's been plaguing me since I finished this book.
Novels like this are my reason for living. Those ultra-rare, highly uncommon books that can, and will, absolutely destroy you. Annihilate you. Ruin you in the best possible way. Tell Me I'm Worthless is the kind of book that leaves you questioning if what you just read was even real, or if, somehow, you managed to ingest a horrific amount of drugs before picking it up. This book is punk to its rotting core, and clearly, is the work of an angry author with a venomous passion to make sense of the crumbling world around them.
Review updated as of Jan 22nd 2024. Read this for the second time (Jan 15th-16th '24) Enjoyed it just as much, if not more, than the first time.
When does a novel become more than just a novel? When, if ever, can it be considered art? When does it transcend everything, even itself, to become this enigmatic thing that's impossible to describe? The answer to that lies within these pages. Have you ever experienced a haunting? A question that's been plaguing me since I finished this book.
Novels like this are my reason for living. Those ultra-rare, highly uncommon books that can, and will, absolutely destroy you. Annihilate you. Ruin you in the best possible way. Tell Me I'm Worthless is the kind of book that leaves you questioning if what you just read was even real, or if, somehow, you managed to ingest a horrific amount of drugs before picking it up. This book is punk to its rotting core, and clearly, is the work of an angry author with a venomous passion to make sense of the crumbling world around them.
"The world outside is dark and unknowable. In the room you are safe. You are subject to violence, abuse, mistreatment, hurt, pain, all of the above, but you are safe from what is outside the room and that's what matters, inside the room is the pain you know, outside the room is the pain you do not know, it's not a hard choice to make in the end, to sit here 'neath the burning sun of her body, her body once a symbol of peace and now look at it look at what they did to her look at how much pain she is in look see, she's begging you."
It's worth stating that I appreciate greatly the importance of work like this. Not only is this the work of a trans author who provides an unflinching own-voices commentary on the state of Britain, but it's also the work of someone who manages to navigate sensitive and delicate topics with a surprising elegance, considering the viscerally upsetting nature of the novel in question. Understandably, this is a deeply depressing and uncomfortable reading experience, and will surely divide the opinions of those who encounter it. It's a book that simultaneously ruined my life, and greatly improved it.
Tell Me I'm Worthless was, and still is, one of the most difficult books I've ever had to review. And, it's almost impossible for me to recommend this to anyone. As a reviewer, how do I even begin to suggest a book such as this? One that's packed full of extremism, violence, slurs, knife play, and perhaps, contains every trigger warning imaginable? Yet, despite all of this, despite the horrific nature of the book. It's one that I feel almost everyone should read.
Quite simply, it's a marvelous work of fiction. There's beauty in its ugliness, virtue in its sin. It's so intensely perverse, so intimate, so erotic, at times, it's sleazy and yet at times, it's also wonderfully tender. This book contains the soul of it's author. This is a book that I'd be proud to be buried with. Thank you, Alison Rumfitt, for writing one of my favorite novels of all time.
"Then, O my beauty! Say to the worms who will devour you with kisses, that I have kept the form and the divine essence of my decomposed love!"