Must-Read Body Horror For the Fall: Grotesque, Haunting, Unforgettable Recommendations from A. Rushby
Body horror is a deeply personal subgenre–what each reader is looking for in a tale varies widely. Some people don’t want to read about cannibalism. Others have a thing about eyes. Others still can’t handle zombies. One person’s yuck is another person’s yum. And if this is how readers feel, imagine writing this stuff.
As I wrote my gothic feminist body horror novel Slashed Beauties, I was fairly convinced no editor would every buy it. It’s too weird! I told myself. Too much. Too personal. Turns out I was quite wrong as editors loved it. Bid on it even! And then I was asked to lean into that weird even more. I guess as Mary Shelley herself said in the introduction to Frankenstein, “What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow”. How true this is–we are never really alone in our fears. Like a few more fears to add to your collection? You might want to dip into some of my favourite body horror reads below.
Let’s ease on in with some cosy body horror (yes there is such a thing) with Rachel Harrison’s Cackle. Perfect for the start to spooky season, this is small town vibes, light-hearted, feminist and witchy (that said, if you have spider issues, this read is probably your worst nightmare).
Let’s take it up a notch (or three). Have blue eyes? You might want to skip Monika Kim’s The Eyes are the Best Part. Don’t have blue eyes, or don’t care? Like your revenge twisted and odd? Want to make yourself feel a little bit queasy? Ji-won is the heroine for you.
Like plants? Ever wondered if they might be thinking about murdering you? After reading Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Giffin you will! Extra points here for a decaying mall setting, because I don’t think there are enough books about decaying malls.
After losing her job and her fiancé and moving back from the city to live with her parents, Shell Pine needs some help. And according to the sign in the window, the florist shop in the mall does too. Shell gets the gig, and the flowers she works with there are just the thing she needs to cheer up. But you have to get your hands dirty if you want your garden to grow–and Neve’s secrets are as dark and dangerous as they come. In the back room of the flower shop, a young sentient orchid actually runs the show, and he is hungry . . . and he has a plan for them all.
Let’s move on to a classic with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m horrified (see what I did there) by how many horror lovers haven’t read this wonderful book that is dark and wonderful and truthful and haunting. Forget any movie adaptation you’ve ever seen and go straight to the source. I’ve read this multiple times and still cry every single time.
For years, Dr. Victor Frankenstein labors to create a new race of intelligent beings. He spends his nights scavenging body parts from graveyards, slaughterhouses, and hospital dissection rooms. By day, he experiments in his secret laboratory, perfecting the creature who, he believes, will worship him as a god. But when he succeeds, Frankenstein is horrified by the ugly brutishness of the patchwork being he has brought to life—and abandons his creation to dramatic ends …
I’ll read anything by T. Kingfisher, who is just downright entertaining (another book includes a sentient sourdough starter named Bob!). No such frivolity is to be found here. What Moves the Dead is super-creepy–all fungus and decay. As per usual with Kingfisher, there are great side characters.
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves. Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.
This next book gave me nightmares for at least a week and I still think about it years—years!—on. Technically Young Adult, Peadar Ó Guilín’s The Call makes The Hunger Games look like a walk in the park. Nothing is crueller than an Irish faerie (well, maybe Peadar Ó Guilín—I’ve often thought about emailing him and asking if he’s okay). If you’re not familiar with Irish faeries, they’re the sort of dark, twisted faerie who think it great sport to hunt you down and tear you to shreds. Plus they look hot while they’re doing it. You have been warned.
Finally, a book I never recommend lightly: Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings. This book comes with so many trigger warnings they practically comprise a whole novel in themselves. I delight in the cover, which is super-cute and gloriously misleading. If you rail against society’s expectations and want to take things to a very strange place indeed, Murata is always the author for you.
As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit in with her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut, who talks to her. He tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. One summer, on vacation with her family and her cousin Yuu in her grandparents’ ramshackle wooden house in the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki decides that she must be an alien, which would explain why she can’t seem to fit in like everyone else. Later, as a grown woman, living a quiet life with her asexual husband, Natsuki is still pursued by dark shadows from her childhood, and decides to flee the “baby factory” of society for good, searching for answers about the vast and frightening mysteries of the universe–answers only Natsuki has the power to uncover.
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