Prerna's Reviews > Tell Me I’m Worthless

I sometimes get such terrible headaches that I find myself wishing that someone would volunteer to crush my skull with a rock and end my pain once and for all. Needlessly violent, I know. But the headaches are so oppressive that I absolutely can't function and something primal within me gets triggered.

I think we all have those moments when conditions that are internal or external to us cause our entire worldview to be flung outwards from an unstable centre, or we feel like our brains have turned into spinning tops. We lose solidity and are unsure of bodies. These hands, these breasts, these feet. Are they mine? Why do I see them floating about? No, I'm not high. I'm just detached from myself, my material existence seems to be a sham. If I close my eyes, will my hands just disappear altogether?

Fortunately for us, these moments are very brief and we snap out of them soon. Unfortunately for the characters in this book, it's all they ever feel. Uncertainty and hatred. So much hatred. Towards themselves and others. The thing about hatred is, it always is restless. It always finds an outlet.

I can see that the author was very inspired by Shirley Jackson (there are direct quotes) and that this book tries to offer the best of all horror worlds. But somehow, the haunted-house-is-a-living-breathing-character didn't work for me. Unlike with Jackson's haunted house, this one always seemed to have a clear agenda and victims. However, I really enjoyed the body-horror. But as far as horror is concerned, I don't know man, it just wasn't scary. Not in the conventional way at least. It was scary in the way fascism is scary. No jump scares, which is good. (Can a book even have jump scares?) But it was always trying to be in-your-face, over-the-top, scary. And that just made it not-scary. It was all just weird. Sometimes in a good way, but mostly in a confusion inducing way.