Imperfect Creatures by Joe Butler
Diachroneity Books, 2025
ISBN-13: 9781738360925
Available: Paperback, audio
Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

As Clare drives along the road to the small town of Harrow to attend her father Marshall’s funeral, she hits a man with her car. A panic attack strikes her as the man dies in front of her. The police and paramedics arrive, asking the usual questions, until one of them asks if she has heard of the New Foundation. After Clare accepts a ride to the diner there from a police officer, she has a strange conversation with her aunt, and finally returns to her childhood home. Warned against working with Marshall’s research assistant Jack, she searches for his research notes for his final book.

Shortly after the funeral, Clare collapses, and wakes up as she finds herself driving along the road to attend her father Marshall’s funeral, when she hits a deer with her car. She attends the funeral, and meets Jack who knows many things about Marshall’s research and wants to help Clare put the pieces together, even though she has been warned not to get involved with her. Then, she wakes up to another vehicular accident.

Stuck in a warped time loop, with each cycle opening a different mystery, the pattern repeats several times. With each repetition, Clare discovers more about the New Foundation, and the House, an eons-old eldritch being. She faces her mother’s dementia and tragic death, as well as family secrets.

The book is sectioned into the acts that are titled for the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), plus one called “Trauma.” Butler’s story is unsettling, with characters that are Lynchian in their small-town ways and even the environment. An aunt delivering warnings of doom, an enigmatic cult leader with a wish to bring people to the House, the ghost of Clare’s father providing clues, and more, provide an eerie cast, guiding or hindering Clare throughout the book. Clare’s paranoia about impending doom, reliving family trauma, and her own death, always simmer underneath, even when she tamps them down and tries to deny them. She questions her sanity and wonders if what she experiences is real, which makes for an interesting and frightening read.

The physical environments are effective at creating a sense of unease. It was difficult not to imagine the diners from Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks as Clare was taking in her surroundings when she was inside the local diner. I was never sure if it was a safe place, an in-between space, where characters could breathe before their next dilemma or if it was a place where danger lurked underneath.

The design of the book itself is reminiscent of books like House of Leaves, and Uketsu’s Strange Houses and Strange Buildings. Text boxes are arranged throughout, disrupting the main story. Strange figures appear in the margins. Disjointed sentences litter some of the pages, making the reader stop to decipher the words and images. Excerpts from Marshall’s notebooks lead Clare and the reader through his thought processes, research, and disturbing discoveries that could not possibly be real (could it?). I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of just flipping through the pages where Butler experimented with the layout.

This would be a great book for readers who are fans of David Lynch, House of Leaves, and cosmic horror. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker