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A review by readthesparrow
The Trees Grew Because I Bled There: Collected Stories by Eric LaRocca
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
(I was provided a digital review copy by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for a review.)
I really wanted to like this collection. This was my first introduction to LaRocca, and while I had heard conflicting opinions in horror circles (you either love his work or really don't), I was pretty sure I'd fall into the camp of enjoying it. I usually like horror authors whose work is controversial and style bizarre. However, while LaRocca's collection voice in this collection was certainly strong, elements of it such as the use of metaphor and line pacing were obtrusive or distracting from the tension, character, and thematics that otherwise were so strong.
The reason why I want to talk about voice in this collection is because the introduction, written by Chuck Wendig, waxes poetic about how strong LaRocca's voice is. Wendig claims that LaRocca's voice is so strong because he has empathy for his characters, because his stories revolve around queerness and sacrifice and transformation and viscera. "The dark magic at the core of this collection," Wendig says as the introduction comes to an end, is from a "sentence found in the titular tale of the collection: Anything that's worth doing always hurts."
I do agree with Wendig on his analysis of LaRocca's work. If not for the strong thematics, his care in portraying his characters, and the visceral imagery LaRocca just knows how to present, I would have probably DNF'd this collection. The sticking point here is the prose.
I don't like LaRocca's prose. I'm sorry, but it really turned me off. Usually I love purple prose and indulgent descriptions, especially in short stories, especially when that prose is more blood red than purple. But I think my thoughts can best be summed up by a note I made while reading the short story "You're Not Supposed to Be Here": My god would it kill you to write a paragraph without a metaphor? Once I noticed how many metaphors LaRocca uses--and never short and sweet ones--I couldn't not notice and be annoyed. I counted over 110 metaphors; the book is 147 pages total, with 115 of those pages being the actual short stories. That's around a metaphor a page; in some sections, there would be multiple metaphors per page.
And, look, again, I love a good metaphor. I wouldn't even say any of the metaphors were necessarily bad. They were all evocative, all clear, but a lot of them were just a little too much.
For example, in "The Strange Thing We Become," the scene with the Morse code machine (page 50 in my review copy) has seven metaphors and similes. Seven! At some point it's fluff. It's distracting. I don't need to know that "the machine chirped like a furious sparrow," just say that it chirped. The word chirped is doing enough lifting there! All those metaphors are exhausting. They're annoying. They're intrusive, and not in a good creepy horror way, in a "please just get to the point dear God" type way.
If the prose was improved, this collection could have been a 3-4 star read. As it is, the metaphors crop up everywhere in the prose like the mycelium of an invasive species of fungus rendering the prose more difficult to read than something black and white and red all over and more unevenly paced than a horse with five legs.
I have another book of his. I dearly hope that either those metaphors have been pruned over the years or his style has changed, because if not I'll be very sad because I very much would like to enjoy his work.
I really wanted to like this collection. This was my first introduction to LaRocca, and while I had heard conflicting opinions in horror circles (you either love his work or really don't), I was pretty sure I'd fall into the camp of enjoying it. I usually like horror authors whose work is controversial and style bizarre. However, while LaRocca's collection voice in this collection was certainly strong, elements of it such as the use of metaphor and line pacing were obtrusive or distracting from the tension, character, and thematics that otherwise were so strong.
The reason why I want to talk about voice in this collection is because the introduction, written by Chuck Wendig, waxes poetic about how strong LaRocca's voice is. Wendig claims that LaRocca's voice is so strong because he has empathy for his characters, because his stories revolve around queerness and sacrifice and transformation and viscera. "The dark magic at the core of this collection," Wendig says as the introduction comes to an end, is from a "sentence found in the titular tale of the collection: Anything that's worth doing always hurts."
I do agree with Wendig on his analysis of LaRocca's work. If not for the strong thematics, his care in portraying his characters, and the visceral imagery LaRocca just knows how to present, I would have probably DNF'd this collection. The sticking point here is the prose.
I don't like LaRocca's prose. I'm sorry, but it really turned me off. Usually I love purple prose and indulgent descriptions, especially in short stories, especially when that prose is more blood red than purple. But I think my thoughts can best be summed up by a note I made while reading the short story "You're Not Supposed to Be Here": My god would it kill you to write a paragraph without a metaphor? Once I noticed how many metaphors LaRocca uses--and never short and sweet ones--I couldn't not notice and be annoyed. I counted over 110 metaphors; the book is 147 pages total, with 115 of those pages being the actual short stories. That's around a metaphor a page; in some sections, there would be multiple metaphors per page.
And, look, again, I love a good metaphor. I wouldn't even say any of the metaphors were necessarily bad. They were all evocative, all clear, but a lot of them were just a little too much.
For example, in "The Strange Thing We Become," the scene with the Morse code machine (page 50 in my review copy) has seven metaphors and similes. Seven! At some point it's fluff. It's distracting. I don't need to know that "the machine chirped like a furious sparrow," just say that it chirped. The word chirped is doing enough lifting there! All those metaphors are exhausting. They're annoying. They're intrusive, and not in a good creepy horror way, in a "please just get to the point dear God" type way.
If the prose was improved, this collection could have been a 3-4 star read. As it is, the metaphors crop up everywhere in the prose like the mycelium of an invasive species of fungus rendering the prose more difficult to read than something black and white and red all over and more unevenly paced than a horse with five legs.
I have another book of his. I dearly hope that either those metaphors have been pruned over the years or his style has changed, because if not I'll be very sad because I very much would like to enjoy his work.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Self harm, Violence, Gore, Death, Death of parent, Abortion, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Cancer, Grief, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Dementia, Infertility, Physical abuse, and Incest