|
Someone mentioned it on Twitter and I looked it up. It seemed interesting. I finished reading it last night. This morning I woke up and wanted to discuss it. It won’t leave me alone. Negative Space is a weird horror book that’s difficult to describe without spoiling or getting pretentiously overwrought. In reviews, people compare it to Mark Z. Danielewski‘s House of Leaves. I found it reminded me of John Dies at the End, and Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy because the prose shared a taut menace, even malevolence. Reading reviews some people hate it because “nothing happens” and while fair, I think those people miss a deeper reading. Perhaps they should read it again. Negative Space takes place in a decaying town in New Hampshire centered around a group of disaffected teenagers. It covers their senior year in high school and their relationships and attempts to cope with a crushing suicide epidemic, often through a lot of drug use. Things get worse from there. It’s dark, lurid, too familiar in places and heart-breaking. Light spoilers follow: One of the characters, Lu, states it best early on that it’s about minor gods and goddesses and warlocks in a small New England town. Weird cultish rituals focused by a drug called WHORL. I would dearly love to discuss this book with someone, and may edit this space later with some spoilered questions.
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2021 14:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 7, 2024 19:42 |
|
|
I've been shilling this book every chance I get. I have been really hoping someone else could read it so I could talk about it with them, so thank you! I couldn't get the book out of my head for days after I read it. On a surface level, as a horror fan, I rarely find a book that captures the occult and body horror quite as well as this. On a deeper level, though, having grown up amongst moderately rich but very disaffected suburban kids at the peak of the opioid crisis, the way he portrays nihilism and self-destruction was so emotionally devastating it forced me to put the book down at points. The mass shooting is what really made me realize it was expressing some deep generational pain that really struck a chord in me. A mass shooting, what used to be a huge event in our society, is given half a paragraph and a shrug. Why wouldn't it be? Also: I loved how he portrayed the lgbtq characters. I didn't realize until a lovely parent called a character their deadname that they were trans (and I had a actual moment of confusion, as you should when someone is deadnamed randomly!). Multiple characters just exist as bi/pan and fluidly date whoever without a single textual mention of it. It just is.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2021 03:14
|
|
|
Famethrowa posted:I've been shilling this book every chance I get. I have been really hoping someone else could read it so I could talk about it with them, so thank you! Omghello and same new friend!! I’m not a big horror buff, because I’ve gone soft in my old age; but it certainly felt like it set itself apart. There are a lot of issues both topical and personal to the reader it opens up in detail because creates this terrible landscape to pick from. I did want to talk about the trans character you mentioned. Okay so I was confused at first about Lu too. So one of the things I started paying attention to who was speaking to or about her. But there’s a point in the middle where *something* happens in the dream with Tyler, Jill and Lu that I don’t fully understand, but I believe has enormous importance. So I wonder if the deadnaming was done intentionally in order to see if the reader caught it. I’ve also noticed it repeats itself in the beginning and ending, like the book itself is a loop, a whorl, an oval. The geese and Jill’s mom talking about pizza was what got my attention.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2021 22:29
|
|
|
Kumo posted:Omghello and same new friend!! Lu in particular read as someone who existed in our reality but also was a step beyond. They seemed to shift and morph and see things from an alien POV. I read it initially as them being autistic, but Tyler did call them a warlock so some point, so perhaps she had unlocked a new plane of existence through her own ritual magic? Was the town falling into...whatever that was... indicating rebirth? The book is so esoteric its hard to know. gently caress, after I finish Amygdalatropolis I think I need to revisit. I'm remembering the scenes of Ahmir and Tyler attempting to set up an adult life in a lovely roach apartment and coping with crushing poverty and drug addiction and how real that felt.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2021 04:26
|
|
|
Kumo posted:Reading reviews some people hate it because “nothing happens” and while fair, I think those people miss a deeper reading. Perhaps they should read it again. How deep a reading is going to be needed to "get" it?
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2021 15:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 7, 2024 19:42 |
|
|
OscarDiggs posted:How deep a reading is going to be needed to "get" it? I’m not certain I get it. There are frequent similarities at the beginning & ending of the book, too many to be a coincidence. Ahmir & the Mica Witch is another one.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2021 00:58
|
|