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A review by lkedzie
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
5.0
It's like do you ever read The Haunting of Hill House and think, "okay but could this book be queerer?"
"And more fascism!" says the uninvited racist, standing behind you, right now, as you read this, wearing a mask that is your face, except that you touch your face and realize you don't know it, don't know that you aren't wearing a mask as your face as well.
I tend to believe in the Steppenwolf Theater approach to content warnings as trying to wrestle Jello, but I think that makes me admire works like this one that come by them honestly.
My gripe would be that some of the plot points are too cliche, the but that's the point? The 'it's like' was almost 'I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter but horror. Well, more horror,' except that the author herself invokes it in epigram, and a mapping of the respective constellations here shows how to do something right that people often get wrong. Genre fiction often has an allegorical or quasi-allegorical element to it - think 'sex kills' in slasher films - but part of that is working as a sort of cultural therapy session of externalizing our fears. But while there is plenty of room for subversion, (although, I would suggest that it is room for subversives more than for subversion) we are most accustomed to experiencing that messaging in horror as normative in aspect. This book flips that particular table. This is hard to do, or it takes a certain unflinching attitude to do, because it runs widdershins to our learned sensibilities.
Basically, what might land flat works because the author engages the fuckedupedness of the whole thing, and it all becomes the language of a different horror, one as relevant but a story not told because of traditionally horror's role in things, and because the themes of classic horror map on particularly well to all the myriad inflections of hate, seeped into our society and ourselves.
"And more fascism!" says the uninvited racist, standing behind you, right now, as you read this, wearing a mask that is your face, except that you touch your face and realize you don't know it, don't know that you aren't wearing a mask as your face as well.
I tend to believe in the Steppenwolf Theater approach to content warnings as trying to wrestle Jello, but I think that makes me admire works like this one that come by them honestly.
My gripe would be that some of the plot points are too cliche, the
Spoiler
the assault by Joyce for instanceBasically, what might land flat works because the author engages the fuckedupedness of the whole thing, and it all becomes the language of a different horror, one as relevant but a story not told because of traditionally horror's role in things, and because the themes of classic horror map on particularly well to all the myriad inflections of hate, seeped into our society and ourselves.