A review by gasperyjacques
Dead Animals by Phoebe Stuckes

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

4.0

It was starting to feel like the theme of the year was violence.

Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton Audio for access to a review copy of this audiobook.

I’ll preface my thoughts on this with the fact I found the prologue, where the narrator is assaulted by a stranger at a party and the immediate aftermath where she's self conscious of bruises she can’t explain, sickeningly relatable.

After being sexually assaulted the narrator is traumatised in a way she repeatedly compares to being poisoned, and she struggles to relate to other people.

Her friends and her colleagues can't understand her - except for the ex-girlfriend of her attacker, who she forms an intense and concerning bond with.

Alongside this catastrophe relationship there is a focus on how dehumanising, exhausting, and deeply boring service work can be - which was unexpected, but I thought it was depicted refreshingly well.

The narrator's self blame when she starts noticing signs of an inexplicable post-traumatic haunting was slightly predictable, but still genuinely unsettling and the descriptions of her eerie bedsit reminiscent of Alison Rumfitt's brilliant Tell Me I'm Worthless. 

Some of the narrator's nightmares were both disturbing and impressive, truly rivalling anything I've read in a Stephen King novel.

I do have extremely mixed feelings on the epilogue and that's why I'm not rating this above 4 stars, but I found nearly everything prior to that riveting and terrifying. This was a strange, sickening, surprisingly insightful novel.
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