Here's another novel that has quite a reputation in the Books of Horror group as a challenge, the sort of book that you buy for someone else and dare them to finish it. Many people won't because it would gross them out and I can provide plenty of reasons why, but there's a lot more to it than a talent for taking a step further than some readers are willing to follow. This is a powerful look at a regular couple of themes for many horror fans: how to deal with the fact that you're different and how to deal with a connection to someone else who's different (and different from you).

To do that, it brings two characters together who absolutely aren't normal but in ways that go far beyond most of us. They're very different in why they're not normal but that's a connection and it allows them to build a relationship that's just as different as they are. I found all that fascinating.

I don't believe we're ever provided with the name of the graveyard shift security guard at Preston Druse Charity Hospital, the thirty-sixth best hospital in Ohio, from whose perspective the novel is told. However, that may be appropriate because he calls himself a "mere formality, a small blip on the payroll, and a largely unnoticed presence about the premises." He's out there somewhere but he's nameless and faceless and, well, you probably wouldn't want to know him anyway.

That's because his taste in women is for them to be not breathing. He's a necrophile who benefits from that anonymity by sneaking down to the hospital morgue once in a while to have sex with a corpse. He doesn't have a type, other than female and dead, but he likes the near death smell so often realises who's going to be moving soon from ward to morgue and that builds anticipation. He also doesn't much care about condition, Abigail M. Turpentine dying in a boating accident so was heavily bandaged with a missing left arm. She's still right for him.

We are introduced to Helen Winchester, though, who's the head maternity nurse at the very same hospital. Our protagonist meets her when he's called up to the maternity ward to deal with a pair of distraught parents struggling to deal with the tragic death of their newborn baby. Dad fails, so kills his wife and then himself, right there in the ward. And, while that doesn't faze our necrophile security guard, he can't fail to notice Helen's dead eyes as she watches on. We later learn that it's because she gets high on pain meds but for now he just knows she isn't right either so he starts to pay attention to her on the security cameras.

And, when she visits the morgue, he follows, only to find her naked on a sheet eating the corpse of the baby. Hilariously, her response to his arrival is, "This... this isn't what it looks like." Of course, it's exactly what it looks like but, for some reason, he doesn't turn her in. Maybe something in him recognises a sort of kinship in their deviance, even though their proclivities of choice happen to be completely different. Whatever the reason, there's a connection there and she starts to visit him at work. They talk and they change.

There are conventional ways for this to take. Without the necrophilia and cannabilism, this is how romance novels start. However, Chandler Morrison's only pandering to convention is for Helen to be gorgeous. Of course, the leading lady will be gorgeous. Of course, the leading man will respond to that. Except, here, he doesn't because she isn't remotely hot to him. After all, she's still alive. I should mention that he started the book completely failing to get hard after fifteen minutes of a hot college girl sucking him off, leaving the experience equally as blankfaced as when it began.

So this isn't the conventional connection, but it's a connection nonetheless. They talk. They learn about each other. They share their origin stories, suggesting that his is due to nature but hers to nurture. As a kid, her baby brother Jason was smothered by her ferret, Samson, who then ate his face. Their dad killed it and mum, traumatised by the situation, drowned in her own vomit, while Helen realised that she cared most about the loss of Samson. It wasn't his fault. He merely raped a drunk college student at a party he didn't want to go to and, after she gets pregnant, aborts the baby and slits her wrists, he does her again as a corpse and it's even better for him. There are no mitigating factors there.

What I think matters here most is how they change each other through this interaction. He's your traditional sociopath in that he has no emotion, no empathy and no remorse. He's accepted being different and has embraced it enough that he feels a sort of superiority over the mere mundanes. Helen, on the other hand, knows precisely what she is and has found a way to satisfy her passion, mostly by breaking into abortion clinics, but she regrets all of it. Her addiction to pain pills is how she minimises her ache to be normal and counters her inability to ever get there.

However, the more that he talks with Helen, the more he softens. He's driving one night when he comes on a car that's skidded off the road, probably to avoid a deer, and, while he certainly stops to see if the driver's female and dead, he calls 911 when he finds her alive and saves her life in the process. When the paramedic, who thinks he's creepy, asks if he'd like to be told if she makes it or not, he realises that he does. He's done a good thing and that's something entirely new for him. He freely admits early on that, like any sociopath, it's all about him. Apparently no longer.

And the more that Helen talks with him, the more she hardens. She starts to come to terms with her abnormality and even to push at its boundaries, exploring the possibilities of what she is and letting go of her struggles with what convention says she ought to be. Of course, that somewhat inevitably leads to a thoroughly awkward sex scene, awkward for both of them as well as us, which they promptly vow never again to repeat. Needless to say, it isn't remotely that simple and things move forward, both in ways we expect and some we don't. There's even a twist that I should have seen coming but nonetheless didn't.

So there are real questions here. It's certainly important to acknowledge that we're all different and that's a good thing. We should learn to accept who we are, even if who we are goes against a mainstream norm, and embrace our differences. Diversity is a positive thing, especially when it's under attack, like right now in America. I find it fascinating that Morrison manages to raise those lessons through the avatar of two people whose differences fall firmly into taboo territory. Given how these two people end up, we can also read this as a plea for empathy. It's OK to be different but we should never lose empathy, another important lesson at a time when Elon Musk has called it "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization".

This isn't a long book. a short novel wrapping up in a hundred and sixty or so pages, but I was kept fascinated throughout. I hesitate to suggest I devoured it, given the context, but I read last thing at night and didn't go to sleep until I was done in a single session. These characters are wrong but the conversation the book raises about diversity is very right. While I was horrified at who these people are and what they do, I had sympathy for their isolation and hope for the connection that might help them. That's good writing and I'd put this above 'Cows' and 'Woom' as an example of a transgressive novel that most people won't be able to read but nonetheless has real substance. Goddamn, I enjoyed it! ~~ Hal C F Astell