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Book Review: Horrid by Katrina Leno

A note from the editor:

We are midway through October and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $195 we need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of Horrid by Katrina Leno.

Horrid by Katrina Leno  (  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com  )

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0316537247

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

 

There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

And when she was good,

She was very, very, good,

And when she was bad, she was horrid!

 

The title of Horrid comes from a nursery rhyme that started out as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and there’s definitely some foreshadowing going on. After her father dies, Jane and her mother reluctantly move to the home where her mother grew up, North Manor, in Bells Hollows, Maine. Empty since her grandmother died, North Manor has an abandoned air. Its windows are broken and it is in disrepair, with bad wiring, creaky floors, and a local reputation as the “creep house”. Surprisingly, although it is September, roses are in full bloom.

Jane’s mother won’t explain why she never brought Jane there before, and as the two of them clean up, move in, and begin to move forward, strange and unexplained things start happening in the house and garden. Jane starts school, makes friends, and gets a job working in a bookstore, while her mom sorts and cleans and starts a new job with long hours. Wariness and even hostility from longtime residents of the community when they hear Jane is living in North Manor makes Jane suspect something terrible happened there that caused her mother to leave. Strange things keep happening: Jane discovers she’s lost time, with no memory of text messages she’s sent or things she’s done; she is certain someone is in the house, but no trace can be found; she has sudden bursts of violent temper. As she and her mother try to cope with their grief and loss, Jane becomes more and more disoriented, especially once she learns the town, and her mother, have been keeping her in the dark about a twisted family secret.

Very early in the book, we learn that Jane has pica (a psychological disorder that causes people to eat non-nutritive items and is associated with OCD and schizophrenia). Eating pages from books helps her manage her anger. As the story progresses, it’s difficult to tell if Jane is in a dissociative fugue and expressing extreme anger due to mental illness aggravated by grief and stress, especially after her mother takes her book away, or if she’s being possessed and/or haunted. I’m not familiar enough with pica to know if Leno’s representation is accurate, but her writing is evocative. It turns out that Jane is not the only person in her family to have had pica, or what effect it had on the past actions of other family members.

Leno does a great job of portraying the messiness and ugliness of grief and its effects on the book’s characters. Despite recognizing many of the elements of Gothic horror, I did not expect the ending, which left me shocked and breathless. Recommended.

Book Review: Whitechapel Rhapsody by Alessandro Manzetti

A note from the editor (that’s me) :

We are midway through October and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $195 we need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of Whitechapel Rhapsody by Alessandro Manzetti.

cover art for Whitechapel Rhapsody by Alessandro Manzetti

Whitechapel Rhapsody by Alessandro Manzetti   (Amazon.com)

Independent Legions Publishing,  2020

ISBN: 978-88-31959

Available: Kindle edition, Paperback

Ever since Jack the Ripper prowled the streets, he has been the worst kind of nightmare, the shockingly brutal and chilling reality that monster-men can be living among us unnoticed, watching and freely choosing fresh victims. In his new book of poetry, Whitechapel Rhapsody, Alessandro Manzetti uses words from The Ripper’s letters to the police, information about the women and their possible murderers, and even one of the autopsies to access the mind of a killer who has never been identified for certain.

In “The Lair”, which begins the book, and in the rhapsody poems (“Sick Rhapsody,” “Entangled Rhapsody,” and “Madhouse Rhapsody”) which appear at intervals throughout the collection, we are plunged into the ugly, sordid, sick environment of physical and spiritual contagion that was the setting for the murders, if not the spawning ground of the murderer. Against this background, the poems describe the killer as a macabre artist who vows to his victims, “I will make art of you” and causes them to be “carved” by his “iron brushes,” his “long-bladed knife accurate like a Mozart composition.” True to The Ripper’s artistic vision, there is a focus on color, especially shades of red blood and the textures of the organs of the human body in each “still life.” This is the portrait of a demented artist whose imagination is a “giant” that “can feel the vibrating legs of a grasshopper ready to jump on a leaf of a remote island.”

This extreme sensitivity is on display in “She Knew My Name” which riffs on Poe’s “The Raven.” Both poems are about the narrator’s mind and what is happening inside it, how each is processing his experiences. Both narrators indulge in their madness, and that has an emotional impact on the reader. Manzetti confirms that it is not the facts of blood or death that most inspire terror in a reader but the evil imagination of the poem’s speaker igniting the active imagination of the reader’s “dark side.” This fascination that ordinary people have with horror is apparent in “Madhouse Rhapsody,” a reminder of Bedlam where the English citizenry actually went to enjoy the suffering of the imprisoned mentally ill as live entertainment. Also, many of the poems mention the opium, syphilis, perversions, and abuses which were common at the time and could be the source of madness.

Even though it is unlikely we will ever know Jack the Ripper’s identity or what caused him to kill, Whitechapel Rhapsody pulls back the curtain enough for us to fully feel the evil behind the facts and sense the cold, hard facts behind the dark poetic imagination.

Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Book Review: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga (Jasper Dent, #1)

cover for I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga  (  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Little, Brown, Books for Young Readers, 2013

ISBN-13: 9780316125833

Available:  Hardvover, paperback, mass market paperback, Kindle edition, audio CD

Jasper is the 17 year old son of notorious serial killer Billy Dent. The trauma of being raised by Billy teaching him the skills, knowledge, and thought processes necessary to become a successful serial killer has left him with significant holes in his memory, causing him anxiety over what he might have done in the past and may do in the future. His longterm best friend Howie and girfriend Connie are his greatest supporters, but Jasper constantly second-guesses himself over whether their relationships with him are really solid or are just the results of manipulation.

In addition to the anxiety Jasper feels about himself, he also is drawn to use his knowledge when a murder occurs in his town that appears to be a copycat of his dad’s first discovered kill.  Despite being discouraged by the police from interfering with the investigation, Jasper involves himself. While they initially object, when it becomes clear that the killer is a copycat, he becomes a resource for the investigation. Unfortunately this makes some of the people around him targets, including friends and teachers.  Jasper struggles to deal with his impulses and relationships and the effect trauma has had on him and the people around him. How unreliable is he, really? Is he, deep down, a serial killer? Will he become a killer by the end of the book?

For the most part, I was able to get past the completely unrealistic setup of the book (as compromised as social services may be, I have difficulty believing Jasper would be left with his grandmother, who obviously has dementia, or that Howie’s overprotective parents would allow him anywhere near Jasper, for instance) because this was a magnetic, compulsive read that left my hands shaking and heart racing, and a real tribute to friendship and the trust and protectiveness friends can feel for each other (something not often seen in depictions of boys’ friendships).  This is not an easy read; there is no way to climb inside the mind of a serial killer (or even a fictional character describing what climbing into the mind of a fictional serial killer is like) or a severely traumatized teen without being at least a little shaken up. But it’s a compelling, disturbing, and original tale that will appeal particularly to boys. I Hunt Killers is the first in a trilogy, so teens who get hooked don’t have to wait for another hit.  Highly recommended.

Contains: Mutilation, torture, body horror, murder, gore, animal cruelty, discussions of rape.