One Bloody Thing After Another (English Edition)

Comeau has written what must be the least scary book starring people who are inexplicably transformed into hideous, infant-gobbling beasts and a decapitated ghost brandishing her blood-vomiting head in the hallways of a retirement home. But, then again, you won’t see all that many horror novels described as thoughtful and touching, either. So we’re off the map anyway, which is precisely where Comeau likes to be.
A loosely connected trio of plot strands follow two sisters whose mother is chained up in the basement, hungry for live flesh; an obsessive, violently tempered teen traumatized by the ghost of her dead mother; and an old man and his old dog who stoically wade among all the crazies.
The tone is poignant, sometimes wistful, and deadpan funny, and the last chapter promises that “Everyone gets their happy ending,” though some might disagree with Comeau on just what happy means.
The novel is more eccentric than gory, and what’s really shocking about it is that all the mayhem is finally about family ties, both severed and reconnected.

Fantasia / Horror / LGBT / GLS