Have You Read This? To Be Devoured

 

Some horror stories are a rumbling bulldozer, not meant to break any land speed records but designed to crush the reader with its emotional power. Stephen King has written many of these, and for me, the end of stories like IT and The Shining left me feeling like the end of a long journey, battered emotionally but somehow getting stronger for the experience. Then there are novellas and novelettes that are more like high-performance race cars. They go fast and drag you screaming along for the ride. Often able to read in one sitting, these can be true white-knuckle experiences where the reader finally breathes once the book is closed. One such novella that pulls readers along for a horrifying ride is Sara Tantlinger’s lean-and-mean novella To Be Devoured.

The book certainly has an odd but interesting premise. Andi, a young woman in a committed relationship, is trying to work through her various mental issues. Having experienced a great deal of death in her young life, she seeks to be normal for the sake of her girlfriend, but she also becomes fascinated with the vultures that she sees gathering over carrion, which reawakens her fascination with death. Andi must soon decide if she can resist these urges to live as the vultures do, including their appetite for the dead, or will she give in to them?

This story benefits from its slimness, keeping the focus on Andi’s POV as her life spirals out of control. How Andi views life, especially as she begins to lose her grip on sanity, is both beautiful and grotesque. There are indeed moments of profound horror and stomach-turning depictions of viscera and violence, but one still has to marvel at Tantlinger’s approach to depicting seemingly taboo violence in a way that rivals Clive Barker, particularly as the story flirts with body horror. To Be Devoured has no intention of overstaying its welcome as the reader reads, rocketing the reader through Andi’s descent into madness while making sure the reader is given the opportunity to assimilate every visceral detail. There is something refreshing to this bare bones approach to horror, the speed of how the reader reads through a work like To Be Devoured mimics the same fast tempo of the reader’s heartbeat. For those horror fans who want their horror more like roller coasters than bulldozers, they should give To Be Devoured a try.