”What have you done today to deserve your eyes?”
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes is a short collection of three horror stories that explores dark themes of death, obsession, sadomasochism, and transformation, for better or for worse. Two lonely women in the early 2000s meet on an Internet chat and slowly succumb to their dark desires. A couple move to a remote island to escape the aftermath of their son’s death, only to meet a mysterious stranger. A man confronts his neighbor in a strange and dangerous game, right in his own backyard. The premises themselves are enticing if not slightly juvenile, at least in theory.
This collection expects publication on September 6th of this year, but the main short story was actually published originally by author Eric LaRocca under a smaller imprint in June of 2021, under the shortened title, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. Knowing this, I deliberately stayed away from any previous information about the original publication, as I didn’t want that to color my reading experience. However, I will say that one of my bigger qualms with this read was that the collection did not feel cohesive, and it seemed very obvious that it had not always been a collection and did not truly stand alone as one.
”I feel like a new constellation, scabbed in glittering black.”
To its credit, there are lot of good ideas here. There is a lot of good writing here, too. Many, many absolutely gorgeous phrases are scattered throughout this work, hitting you almost to the effect of a freight train with how well they pack a punch, and how viscerally they turn an image. This is a smooth read at least in its language, one that demands one sitting. I don’t want to discount any of the things this collection does have going for it, as it does have its merits.
"We were living past the expiration date."
However, to me, this felt like it was relying on these good phrases and good-yet-fragmented ideas to carry the work. I didn’t feel like the pieces were cohesive with one another, or that many of the themes the author attempted to convey throughout really resonated beyond their actual technical inclusion in the narratives. There were definitely repeated themes, but their repetition felt more like a vague semblance of connectivity, rather than really adding to the narrative or the understanding of it in any way. I’m not sure that these pieces were slow-burn enough to achieve what they attempted to achieve, and yet didn’t pack the punch that a good psych-horror short story typically does, either.
I also had mixed feelings on the way the author chose to approach the very abusive/manipulative lesbian relationship in the first story. While I certainly don’t think authors should stick to writing only about their specific demographic, this felt like a man writing lesbian trauma porn for his own shock factor, rather than contributing to the narrative with the choice to write these characters the way he did. (It’s worth noting that the author uses he/they pronouns, but identified as a cis male at the time this story was first written and released, and this is what comes through so uncomfortably in this particular story.) The characters in this story have no other identity outside of their combined visceral trauma and manipulation, and though it is a short story, I would expect some kind of development in such similar cases.
I also think the choice to tell the first story as a “true crime”-esque tale, with email and IM messages carrying the narrative, made it even more disjointed from the other two stories, and further prevented there being any substance to the characters aside from their shared trauma and joint manipulation. There are definitely stories in this genre and with this narrative structure that I do enjoy, but I feel that the choice to represent a specifically lesbian relationship in such an abusive and violent way without any of the actual character development or attention to the characters within the narrative as anything other than devices to move the plot was a bad move on the author’s part, not because fiction necessarily needs to reflect reality but because this portrayal specifically exaggerates the trauma and violence without backing it up with any true substance.
Overall, it’s obvious that the writer is both talented and incredibly creative, and I did write down quite a few truly beautiful quotes from the work; however, I can’t say that I enjoyed the collection as a whole or the narrative choices the author made throughout. I almost feel that short story form was not what these pieces needed to truly thrive, and wonder if they would be more impactful in long-form. I am, despite this, grateful for the opportunity to read an ARC of this work as provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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