Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes

August 1, 2022
Indie superstar Eric LaRocca (We Can Never Leave This Place, 2022) presents three novellas that capture profound pain and unthinkable horror. The first centers on two women who bond over an antique, exploring the false sense of security and hope in online friendships, told in an epistolary format in email and text messages. In the second, a couple with a strained relationship celebrate their son's seventeenth birthday, but when they learn about his bizarre school project invoking religious horror, things escalate out of control. The fractures between the couple are painful and lead to a labyrinth of lies and deceit involving the overwhelming presence of a young man who lodges with them. In the third novella, the protagonist, Fowler, strikes a series of odd bargains with a neighbor. The story bears the strong influence of Ramsey Campbell in its elaborate game of cat and mouse. With shades of Nicole Cushing and Caitl�n R. Kiernan, LaRocca's book is the ideal choice for readers who want depraved and disturbing horror that scares the living daylights out of them.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 29, 2022
The three bloody stories of LaRocca’s debut collection, all “tethered by the human need to connect with someone, something else,” explore the nether sides of human relationships, digging into physical and emotional abuse and the lengths to which people will go to stay civil. The epistolary title story follows the online relationship between two women as it escalates into increasingly intense submission and domination, culminating in a horrifying event. In the Ari Aster–esque “The Enchantment,” a husband and wife grieving the loss of their son under grotesque circumstances become caretakers of a remote island, where they are visited by a strange man who promises either closure or utter damnation. A man discovers a mysterious bone with his initials etched into it in “You’ll Find It’s Like That All Over” and engages in an escalating series of wagers with his elderly neighbor, stretching his personal boundaries for the sake of affability. These gore-soaked excesses have difficulty reaching satisfying resolutions; the stories’ considerable guts never get a chance to function properly within the collection’s body politic before they are ripped out. Still, the author’s strong prose does an impressive job anchoring everything on solid ground even as the stories spiral into surrealist grotesquerie. LaRocca is a writer to watch.