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Book Review: Cradleland of Parasites by Sara Tantlinger

cover art for Cradleland of Parasites by Sara Tantlinger

Cradleland of Parasites by Sara Tantlinger

Rooster Republic, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1946335395

Available:  Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

Sara Tantlinger has infected many horror fans with a burning passion for poetry, not an easy feat, and the exquisite entries into her newest collection are damn impressive.  I first encountered her work in Devil’s Dreamland, a book devoted to the unimaginable horrors of serial killer H.H. Holmes, both his murders and the monstrous, puzzle box house he created to feed the evil within him, and found myself falling back in love with the form.  It is a difficult task to imbue a reader with true dread and wonder for a single poem, let alone an entire collection. Only a few other poets I have read have riled up the beast within me repeatedly, to accomplish that dark grasp into the soul.

Tantlinger has now done it twice.

Readers of Cradleland of Parasites might draw some parallels to Poe’s “Masque of The Red Death” for obvious reasons, or recognize the nihilism of Thomas Ligotti, but Tantlinger delves deep beyond these influences to create a surreal, yet beautiful nightmare in this 104 page part examination, part love letter to the plague. Yet there’s life in these poems that transcends that macabre mindset and raises it to the art form it aims to be. Imagine Kathe Koja, Gwendolyn Kiste, or Catherynne Valente if they dove soul first into poetry. That image may not be adequate but it’s what is painted in my psyche upon slipping from one piece to the next.

The author treats disease as immortal, untouchable, and unbeatable, which in this world, obviously has plenty of merit. The poems that speak to the reader from the point of view of the plague doctors and victims are fierce, yet touching, but it is the ones in which the disease itself speaks its mind and sings its song where the full impact strikes, and pierces the soul.

It’s bittersweet that Sara Tantlinger released this during the pandemic of our times but it might just serve as a talisman of hope for life, or salve for the lingering doom that Covid brings.

That it is a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award speaks to the horror it evokes in readers’ minds. During this tumultous time, it serves as a fitting reminder of our own mortality, both special and irrelevant in the vast cosmos. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Editor’s note: Cradleland of Parasites is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Poetry. 

 

Book List: Pandemic Fiction Recommendations

There are a lot of books out there to choose from if you want to jack up your anxiety levels right now by reading about pandemics, but there are a few that are far-out enough that you can probably read them without comparing them to our current situation. Whether they’re set in the future, supernatural in nature, or just outside the realm of probability, these books offer us pandemics that can’t touch us.

The Fireman by Joe Hill. The pandemic is caused by a spore that spreads a condition called “dragonscale” that eventually causes the infected to overheat and spontaneously combust. Harper, the main character, who is infected, pregnant, and a nurse, is a complex and fascinating character coping in the midst of panic, disease, isolation, and fear.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.  First off, I am biased towards anything by Connie Wills, but this really is a compelling book, impossible for me to put down once I start it. Willis has written a series of time travel novels and short stories that take place at Oxford University, mostly in the history department, headed by Mr. Dunworthy.  Kivrin, one of his students, has been preparing to visit England near the time of the Black Plague, but due to an error in timing, ends up in the midst of it, a stranger in a community that is disintegrating and literally dying. In the future,  plague is spreading speedily through Oxford, which has been locked down in quarantine procedures, and when it is discovered that the tech running the time machine is patient zero, Dunworthy’s superior shuts down the department entirely, leaving Kivrin lost in the past and pandemics raging in both places. Despite the terrifying circumstances, Willis manages to find humor in the humanity and oddities of many of the characters in a story that is dead serious.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This book has gotten plenty of attention, including compliments from George R. R. Martin. It is post-apocalyptic, varying between a storyline about a group of musicians and actors traveling between the small communities left after a pandemic killed off most of the people, and vignettes about the past, and the people who died from the disease, described in a memorable fashion.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks:  If ever you wanted an alternate history of how an outbreak can spread and lead to massive changes in the world, you’ve got it here.  Brooks uses a different narrative approach than readers may be used to, with his work consisting of short narratives, or “interviews” with different people who lived through the outbreak and the zombie war.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra: In this series of graphic novels, disease has killed off all the men except one, Yorick Brown, and his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand. I don’t consider this horror, but it is a brilliant concept, and pulled off beautifully.

 

 

Book List: Social Distance at the End of the World

We’re getting a little stir-crazy at home, already. School, initially intended to be closed through April 13 due to the coronavirus outbreak, will now be closed til May 1, and frankly, I’m not sure the three of us are going to make it. There are a lot of jokes out there about introverts finally getting the alone time they need, but even my daughter, who can happily disappear for hours under blankets, texting her friends, watching videos, and reading in various formats, is upset about missing school.  There are, I think, very few people who don’t ever want any other people around. It must be something that catches writers’ imagination, though, because there are many stories and books out there about a single individual, or maybe a small group, left alone after the end of the world as we know it.  I’ve seen a bunch of lists for books about pandemics or their aftermath that suggest the same books more than once (The Last Man by Mary Shelley, Station Eleven by Emily St. James Mandel, The Stand by Stephen King, A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe,  The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, to name a few). These are not so much books about pandemics as they are about isolation (or escape from) others, and I’m going to try and offer a few you might not have found on other lists.


1984 by George Orwell. The only thing that’s more disturbing than the way the members of society are set up against each other in this book is that things were about a million times more poisonous in the Soviet Union.  No one can trust anyone else; it’s social distancing as a lifestyle. I recently read the middle-school novel The Story That Cannot Be Told, by J. Kasper Kramer, which, while not entirely historically accurate, described the paranoia involved in just living daily life in Romania before Ceausescu was overthrown, which turned families, even parents and children who loved each other, against themselves in a way you don’t really see in 1984 as Winston is alienated from everyone around him and has no family.

Allison Hewitt Is Trapped by Madeline Roux. This is Roux’s first book, from before she switched to YA fiction, and it starts with bookstore employee Allison Hewitt, trapped in the break room at the bookstore with her coworkers after zombies take over. blogging her story. Thank goodness for the escapism of the Internet, right? This novel actually started as an experiment in fiction, with the entries actually published as a blog, when the publisher noticed and offered Roux a contract.

The Decameron by Giovanni Bocaccio. Seven young women and three young men are escaping the plague of 1348 together in a house outside Florence, Italy. Over the course of 10 days, each individual tells 10 stories, for a total of 100 stories, some tragic, some comic, some erotic. There are worse ways to spend your time when you’re keeping your distance from potentially deadly disease. Bocaccacio wrote for the common man, which in his time meant he wrote in Italian instead of Latin. There are translations out there that will make it easier on you that the version you can download for free, if you want to check it out.

Hollow Kingdom: A Novel by Kira Jane Buxton takes on the point of view of an intelligent animal, one who doesn’t really fit in anywhere: S.T., a tame crow.  Something has happened to his human, and maybe all the humans; they seem ill, are disintegrating, and have developed a taste for raw meat.  The animals, without opposable thumbs, are mostly trapped inside their owners’ houses. It’s kind of like The Secret Life of Pets with a lot less cutesy animation and a lot more unattached body parts, violence, foul language, and junk food.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. This book was awarded Vampire Novel of the Century by the Horror Writers Association in 2012. and shows the damage people take when they are really, truly, distanced from each other.

Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant. Dr. Isabella Gauley’s niece was the index case for  Morris’ disease, which appears to be measles at first, but eventually compromises the infected person’s immune system. The only way to keep people from getting infected is for them to go into a permanent quarantine before they get the disease. Based on the content of this novella, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Mira Grant has strong opinions about vaccination and affordable healthcare.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. There’s so much back and forth of humans and Martians trying to connect, distance themselves, or both, in this book, but the standout story on social distancing (although not the best story in the book) is “The Silent Towns”, in which a man who believes he is the last man on Mars after the colonists have abandoned it, discovers there is also a woman on Mars… but upon meeting her, decides he’d rather live alone.

 

It’s a bummer that the library is closed, but you can probably find these as ebooks through Overdrive, Libby, or Hoopla in the library’s digital collections. If not, you can always consider buying them! If you click on the image, it should take you to Amazon and, if you order from there, the site might actually make some money! Enjoy!