Negative Space - The Disturbing In-Between
*Trigger Warning: Suicide, self-harm, animal harm.*
I wish I could give this an even higher rating than 5/5, something that transcends the confines of this rating system to match the theme of this unbelievable novel.
I was absolutely sucked into this book from the first page. If you're like me and appreciate novels written about teen angst, the MUCH darker side of growing up and the endless possibilities that go with that topic, this is unabashedly for you. This story is about drug-addled, affluent, complacent teenagers in a town with a disproportionate amount of suicides. These kids are so used to it that they run to see the hanging bodies of people they know so that they can take pictures and share them on social media without delay. When Tyler, one of the particularly disturbed teens, begins to wonder about the pattern of the suicides, he delves into some occult-like (but still pretty scientific-sounding) books and learns about a drug and a ritual that will change his world and that of those around him.
This book transcends time by being in the here and now, the future, and the past all at once.
This book transcends sexuality by presenting these teens as having seemingly no preference in who they love, are with, and are themselves (there is even a character who is often referred to as 'she' and 'he,' making it hard for the reader to know exactly who or what this person identifies as).
This book transcends space by reaching into other dimensions and pulling gods, saints, and nameless (terrifying) black 'string' out of it.
This book transcends feelings too by presenting you with imagery that can make anyone reading it experience synesthesia (Ex. "Arnie slurred his voice all alabaster when he really felt something").
The name of the book itself is never directly addressed (which makes sense, since negative space is generally not directly addressed), yet it encompasses all that you experience and see in this book perfectly when you realize the real subjects might not be the teens, but everything that is going on around them to affect them.
I read aloud many parts of this book because they were so disturbing and intriguing to me. There is one section where a book is being read by one of the characters and the excerpt pertains to corn seedlings releasing a pheromone when they are being eaten by caterpillars, which draws in wasps to eat the caterpillars. So it is forcing the wasps to do the bidding of the seedlings without the wasp being aware that they are being manipulated. Then it asks the question of what that means for humanity and how people can manipulate other people for their own ends, making the person being manipulated think that the idea came from their own head and not some external source. Can you think of anything more terrifying than realizing how easily we can become the puppets of external sources, both human and supernatural?
Along with this existential dread is also the pain of being a teenager in a world where there is only drugs, sex, and death constantly surrounding you. Social media plays a huge part here too in spreading the disease of suicide and darkness. It is frightening to watch how much the teenagers rely on it and all the innocence that can be destroyed through the exploration of its unlit corners.
This specific quote made me ache inside, "I dreamed about a supercomputer that could erase anything in existence. First I erased all the spiders. Then I erased all the people, including myself. I wasn't there anymore, but I could still think and remember, and I wept and wept, wanting to be all the way gone."
I honestly felt anxious reading this book, almost like I could slip into a depression that is deep and unrelenting due to how well it is written and how much it brought back memories of my own teen angst and loneliness. It is so real and tangible and there is so much psychedelic madness present here that it is hard to escape. After finishing this book and trying to go to bed, I thought I heard wasps buzzing in my room. I thought I saw black, sticky string cascading from the ceiling onto my bed like soft cobwebs. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep.
A huge thank you to B.R. Yeager for providing Horror Bound with a copy of his book for review.
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