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A review by em_harring
Everything That's Underneath by Kristi DeMeester
3.0
[2.5 stars]
I liked this collection, to an extent. DeMeester certainly knows how to write, and some sentences/passages were quite beautiful and creepy and disgusting. When she chooses to use body horror, it's (for the most part) effective, and paints a vivid, visceral image of what's happening. My main issue with the collection is that most of the stories are annoyingly ambiguous. They feel ambiguous for the sake of ambiguity, and not for the actual plot of the story. The plots for most of the stories are glaringly thin, and because of the ambiguity, almost all of the characters bleed into each other. The strongest story is also her longest: "Split Tongues"; the story does have some ambiguous moments, but uses those well combined with other plot elements, rather than relying solely on ambiguity to drive the narrative.
Overall, I'm interested to read DeMeester's novels, because I'd like to see what she does with a long form narrative.
I liked this collection, to an extent. DeMeester certainly knows how to write, and some sentences/passages were quite beautiful and creepy and disgusting. When she chooses to use body horror, it's (for the most part) effective, and paints a vivid, visceral image of what's happening. My main issue with the collection is that most of the stories are annoyingly ambiguous. They feel ambiguous for the sake of ambiguity, and not for the actual plot of the story. The plots for most of the stories are glaringly thin, and because of the ambiguity, almost all of the characters bleed into each other. The strongest story is also her longest: "Split Tongues"; the story does have some ambiguous moments, but uses those well combined with other plot elements, rather than relying solely on ambiguity to drive the narrative.
Overall, I'm interested to read DeMeester's novels, because I'd like to see what she does with a long form narrative.