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A review by menschmaschine
Kill the Mall by Pasha Malla
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.25
prose: detail-oriented, neurotic and obssessive, delightfully true; a first person stream of consciousness from the mind of a true freak (meant affectionately). not sure whether the protagonist was intended to come off as autistic but one can easily interpret them as such
themes/plot: the novel is more so a collection of ideas than a coherent narrative. bullshit jobs, customer service, consumerism, what it feels like to shop as someone who also works in retail, love of the product and alienation from the other (and its causal relationship under capitalism). it's also a love story with a hopeful ending.
if you want a story in which the haunted building is a character, this might disappoint you. the mall is a setting, upsettingly captured and made static, then reproduced and extrapolated to absurd ends, as if one had fed DALL-E a hundred children's descriptions of what a mall is and asked it to draw a coherent image.
the cover of the novel features a quote by ian williams, claiming "malla writes like a reincarnated kafka". don't believe him too much. the protagonist of kill the mall would find themselves inconsolably out of place in the metamorphosis or the trial but completely at home in the stanley parable.
i encourage any prospective reader to try and engage with the novel on its level. go with its flow and don't overthink whether it's 'too absurd'. it has some interesting things to say, but in the end it's just a fun, light read. classifying it as 'horror' really baffles me.
verdict: i was shocked to see how low the novel was rated here, but in the end i couldn't rate it much higher than that myself. this should tell you enough.
themes/plot: the novel is more so a collection of ideas than a coherent narrative. bullshit jobs, customer service, consumerism, what it feels like to shop as someone who also works in retail, love of the product and alienation from the other (and its causal relationship under capitalism). it's also a love story with a hopeful ending.
if you want a story in which the haunted building is a character, this might disappoint you. the mall is a setting, upsettingly captured and made static, then reproduced and extrapolated to absurd ends, as if one had fed DALL-E a hundred children's descriptions of what a mall is and asked it to draw a coherent image.
the cover of the novel features a quote by ian williams, claiming "malla writes like a reincarnated kafka". don't believe him too much. the protagonist of kill the mall would find themselves inconsolably out of place in the metamorphosis or the trial but completely at home in the stanley parable.
i encourage any prospective reader to try and engage with the novel on its level. go with its flow and don't overthink whether it's 'too absurd'. it has some interesting things to say, but in the end it's just a fun, light read. classifying it as 'horror' really baffles me.
verdict: i was shocked to see how low the novel was rated here, but in the end i couldn't rate it much higher than that myself. this should tell you enough.