Ask parents what scares them and you probably won’t get an answer like ghosts or vampires. Instead they’ll probably answer: They’re afraid of their kids suffering. That fear lies at the heart of Stuart Neville’s BLOOD LIKE MINE (Hell’s Hundred, 373 pp., $29.95), but in this novel, death is not the end, and that makes things infinitely worse.
Rebecca Carter and her daughter, Moonflower, are on the lam. They live in a van, crisscrossing the United States while carrying a dark secret. Broke, alone and without food or a place to go, they stay safe by trying to be as unmemorable as possible wherever they go. That’s easier said than done because whenever they interact with others, bad things happen.
Unbeknown to Rebecca and Moonflower, the F.B.I. is after them. Special Agent Marc Donner and his partner have been hunting a serial killer for two years, and Rebecca and Moonflower are their primary suspects. As life on the road gets harder and the F.B.I. gets closer, mother and daughter must hide while also dealing with a strange and dangerous change in Moonflower.
“Blood Like Mine” is a violent blend of crime and horror that plays with the definitions of predator and prey. However, the story’s real heart comes from its exploration of family and its consideration of what a mother will do for her child. Rebecca and Moonflower only have each other, and that is enough for a while. Then things change and Rebecca realizes that, in the state Moonflower is in, having her daughter is worse than losing her. That, ultimately, is the great horror that makes this twisty, relentlessly paced novel shine.
There is a passage a few chapters into Leslie J. Anderson’s THE UNMOTHERS (Quirk Books, 317 pp., paperback, $18.99) where the main character, a journalist named Carolyn Marshall, wonders if she’s wasting her time following a dead story. Up until that point, the novel has been so tame that readers might wonder the same thing. Fear not! Anderson’s novel is very much alive. The story explodes from there, steadily becoming stranger, bleaker and more exciting.
Marshall is struggling. She recently lost her husband and then had a miscarriage. When her editor sends her to the small town of Raeford, which is known for its horses, to look into reports of a mare rumored to have birthed a human baby, Marshall thinks her boss is forcing her to take it easy. Raeford offers Marshall a cold shoulder and silence. But then a dead horse, a dead human and a naked, unconscious man appear in a field, and Marshall realizes the town is full of secrets. But the more Marshall learns about Raeford, the weaker her grasp on reality becomes. It turns out it’s risky for an outsider to scrutinize what the locals want to keep hidden.
“The Unmothers” is atmospheric and full of ominous revelations. The women of Raeford share a private ritual that is “a horrible, bloody emergency exit.” And that is only one of the town’s many secrets. There is also “the thing in the forest” that kills people, and horses with human eyes. These creepy phenomena make the narrative work as a horror novel, but Anderson also uses Raeford to examine real issues, like teen pregnancy, opioid addiction and the plight of small-town America.
Despite its languid pace, “The Unmothers” is an impressive debut, an intricate and unsettling narrative about desperation that is full of stellar writing.
Kailee Pedersen’s SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS (St. Martin’s Press, 312 pp., $29) is a unremittingly gloomy and oppressive story that will haunt you for days.
Two brothers, Nick and Joshua, grew up with a tyrannical, racist father, Carlyle, who clearly had a favorite son: Joshua. But over time their family crumbled. Tired of being second place, Nick moved away and vowed never to return, and Carlyle disowned Joshua for marrying an Asian American woman named Emilia. Years later, Carlyle summons both of his sons to his deathbed. The call brings Nick, Joshua and Emilia back to Carlyle’s house, where Joshua and his father reconnect, but so do Nick and Emilia, in more than one way. Also, there is a presence in the woods, a fox that hunts Carlyle’s chickens, but it might not be a fox at all.
“Sacrificial Animals” is a novel about a family ruled, and ruined, by toxic masculinity. However, right underneath that is a story of forbidden love that might be something much more sinister. Pedersen is a great writer with a strong voice and an obvious love of language that manifests itself in the use of uncommon words like “eidolon” and “demesne.” When it comes to trauma and atmosphere, the writing shines. When it comes to romance, the writing turns a little melodramatic and florid, with lines like “they are standing uncomfortably close together, like two celestial bodies with briefly intersecting trajectories.”
Luckily, the tension and violence outweigh the romance, and the result establishes Pedersen as a future master of speculative fiction.
The post 3 New Horror Novels Full of Terrors That Are All Too Real appeared first on New York Times.