Have You Read This? Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

 

One of my favorite horror podcasts is This Is Horror. One of the things I love about it, other than their ability to get all the top names in horror to come and talk about the genre, is the entire premise behind their name. The name This is Horror implies that horror doesn’t apply to works that fit into a very specific criteria (“This is horror,” they might say, or “that is horror”). Their widening of the genre definitions has allowed me to notice and review an excellent book, Sara Langan’s Good Neighbors. While it might be missing the vengeful spirits and wholesale slaughter of many horror novels, the book showcases a particular breed of monster: the human being in the throes of groupthink.

If traditional horror has taught its consumers anything, it’s that the most innocent sounding street names (looking at you, Elm Street) will be inverted from a suburban utopia to a maddening dystopia, and Long Island’s Maple Street is no exception (although it could also be a nod to the Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” which is its own tale of suburban paranoia). The Wilde family, including former rock star Arlo and his former-cocktail-waitress wife Gertie, have entered suburbia and discovered a slew of neighbors that seem welcoming at first, particularly alpha neighbor Rhea Schraeder. But a sinkhole appears in their neighborhood just as a malignant rumor springs to life among the neighbors. What follows for the Wildes and the neighbors of Maple Street is a descent into paranoia and madness beginning with accusations made and ending with an American tragedy that has seared itself into the consciousness of those who have the misfortune to live in Langan’s fictional universe.

Langan’s novel is a masterclass in using multiple storytelling techniques, particularly epistolary fiction, to build tension while keeping the story moving. There’s the crime podcast/documentary feel as Langan incorporates interviews, book excerpts, and even the mindset of actors who will play those who have become infamous thanks to what happens in the story. The knowledge that this pretense of community will all unravel hangs over the story, even as the characters, the likable if flawed protagonists and the unlikable hypocritical antagonists alike, are drawn into the story’s gravity, much like the kids of the story are drawn to the sinkhole. The environmental message seems tangential, mere window dressing to add strangeness, but Langan also interjects some pointed commentary about how stories have multiple viewpoints fed by multiple kinds of media. Even as she offers different points of view of how the horrors on Maple Street unfolded, she never flinches from the roiling emotions and slithering insecurities that make these characters both frightening and all too human.

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.