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A review by screamdogreads
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca
4.0
"I think I feel like what an astronaut feels when they hurtle toward earth in a tiny prison chamber, flames eating away at their vessel as they enter our atmosphere. There's a reason objects burn up when they fall to earth like gruesome angels - a reason other than the obvious one. Asteroids the size of armored cars narrow to mere pebbles in a matter of seconds. It's because the planet is a carnivore and just wants to be fed. People want that as well. People like to eat other people. "
Review updated as of my re-read (8.4.24–9.4.24)
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes is a cruel and manipulative toxic whirlpool of a novel that's compulsively readable. Three hauntingly poetic tales have been woven together, connected by an overwhelming devoutness and the deep desire to belong. This is a collection of stories for the damned, it's intense and disgusting. The titular story, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is the star of the novel, and entirely eclipses the two other stories (both of which are brilliant in their own right.)
The overall experience is one of unsettling and horrifying beauty, like slurping tabs off a grimy bathroom floor; it's sickening and even the most formidable of readers will convulse in disgust. Stories like these require some distance, some time to really ruminate on what just happened. And, that, is the mark of an artful, and powerful thing. After all, there's three depraved stories to digest -grotesque, foul and suffocating.
Review updated as of my re-read (8.4.24–9.4.24)
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes is a cruel and manipulative toxic whirlpool of a novel that's compulsively readable. Three hauntingly poetic tales have been woven together, connected by an overwhelming devoutness and the deep desire to belong. This is a collection of stories for the damned, it's intense and disgusting. The titular story, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is the star of the novel, and entirely eclipses the two other stories (both of which are brilliant in their own right.)
The overall experience is one of unsettling and horrifying beauty, like slurping tabs off a grimy bathroom floor; it's sickening and even the most formidable of readers will convulse in disgust. Stories like these require some distance, some time to really ruminate on what just happened. And, that, is the mark of an artful, and powerful thing. After all, there's three depraved stories to digest -grotesque, foul and suffocating.
"Things have gotten worse since we last spoke. I think there's something wrong. It hurts me to even think it, but something's not right with our child. I feel this intense pain all the time, as if someone were sliding a razor blade along my guts. I don't know if I can bear it anymore. I feel like taking a pair of shears and slicing myself open. Would you come then? Would that get your attention?"
Upon a second read, I can see now, how this collection is such a polarizing thing. Despair prevails, and it's heavy with gore in a theatrical and vile way. It's almost too easy, to crush this entire thing in one sitting. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes examines some aggressive and vehemently emotional things, all while depicting the all-consuming impacts of horrible, toxic relationships in a wonderfully elegant manner.
As any good horror novel should, it shocks, and it terrifies, it forces readers to step back and think. At first, these stories seem like they could go anywhere, they amble, but pretty soon, you're forcefully immersed in a brutally ugly journey. Eric LaRocca writes for the broken, for us horror fans who are looking to drown in depravity and corruption. Horror should, horrify, surely? Horror should force us to feel. Horror should, at the very end of it all, scare. This collection does all that, and it does it so very well.
"She observes him for a moment, bewildered, as his eyes seem to linger on the nails driven into Christ's hands and the blood leaking there. He gazes at the portrait longingly as if it were the first time that he was seeing it, as if it were truly a sight to behold, as if he would give anything to endure such wondrous suffering."