review: negative space by B.R. Yeager

“All the world is water. It's always been. It took me eighteen years to drown.”

**tw: mentions of self-harm, death, violence, suicide**

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It’s 6:32 pm and I’m being that bitch that races to the local coffee shop before they close at 7:00 pm, because I need the caffeine to sort the scrambled thoughts that simmer in the depths of my brain.

I don’t think I’m pretentious when it comes to reviewing things. I’d be a really bad professional critic, which is why I’m very hesitant to talk about my thoughts when it comes to novels. I’m pretty easy going with the food I eat, the movies I watch, and the books I read, but I do tend to be picky as to who, or what, I’m giving my time to. When I started reading Negative Space by B.R. Yeager, it was so slow to draw me into its fog but once inside, I found myself lost. Reading this book felt like the first time I ever got high. It felt dense and thick and bewildering. I’ve always been too much of a baby to try hallucinogens, but I imagine reading this book would, in a strange way, replicate that to some degree.

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~If you would like to read the book, then please stop scrolling as I will probably spoil it for you ~

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I would describe Negative Space as a sort of experimental horror lit book that focuses on themes of hopelessness, contempt, and death. The entire premise of this book hinges on you trusting the author enough to keep going. It picks you up from the floor, holds you with an illusion of some hope then repeatedly drops you while accidently stepping on your pathetic naivety. It’s a bit gruesome to describe anything this way, but I mean it in the best way possible.

This twisted coming-of-age novel’s narrative switches between 3 teenagers amongst a group of 4. We get to learn the perspectives (and shortcomings) of Jill, Ahmir, and Lu who are all intertwined with the primary antagonist of the novel, Tyler. They all reside in the fictional town of Kinsfield, New Hampshire, where they grapple with the haunting presence of constant suicides casting a shadow over their community. With the help of a flashy, new drug, WHORL, they’re able to momentarily numb the pain, just like any teenager would want to after learning that their classmates have been going around killing themselves. At this point, the novel takes a whirl at trying to detach you from reality by stripping away the humanity in every character whether it be their sense of self-worth or their view and treatment of others. There are murmurs of the supernatural embedded in the pages with the author giving you crumbs at what’s going on without ever explicitly telling you throughout its 364 pages. Death is the driving force behind the pace of the novel, specifically the characters’ lives. As even their loved ones start to die, they are forced to succumb to the pressure that this epidemic is causing or get out to save any sanity they have left.

“All the world blurred, a vibrating hemorrhage, and it was fine because I could finally feel how little impact I’d ever have on the world. Losing that dread that one day you’ll somehow ruin everything, for yourself and everyone else. The realization that I could simply leave and the world wouldn’t miss me.”

Beyond the plot, I really appreciate the novel's candid approach to sexuality and the sense of being trapped in a town with no prospects. The story leaves nothing off-limits, capturing the characters' spontaneous decisions and the essence of being a teenager. However, because they’re drug-induced, depressed teenagers, they also have some awful sides to them. We understand that Lu struggles with identity and is given shit for it. We understand that some of these kids like to torture animals for absolutely no reason. We understand that Tyler is doing something to cause the killings, but the rest is up to us to figure out and interpret.

The biggest challenge of this book is simply getting through it because of its oppressive bleakness. This novel infiltrated my mind and I consistently had dreams that kind of resembled the jumbled and otherworldly feeling that this story gave. I think it’s definitely not for everyone, especially if you like books that have a solid beginning and a finite end. It’s terribly desolate, yet incredibly intelligent at giving you just the right amount of pieces to put together for you to feel some sort of success at understanding what’s going on. You might hate it or you might actually enjoy it. That being said, if you like weird horror, definitely read it. 4.9/5

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a good little song for this book

-victoria ♡♡

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