The Graceview Patient
By Caitlin Starling
Review by Mida
I forgot how much I love a good, solid horror but this book did a great job of reminding me. With visceral descriptions of body horror and tension that ramps up chapter by chapter, this is something to devour. Margaret starts hesitant but hopeful, but the longer she spends in the too-clean ward with the overly kind nurses who refuse to give a straight answer, the more she suspects something is very, very wrong.
Starling’s prose dances between poetry and splatter film, with dreamlike sequences of hallucinations that blur the borders of reality before slamming Margaret back to her bed to ponder the helplessness of her situation. An integral part of the horror is the isolation of chronic illness – along with the real fear that the solution she is being fed might make things worse, rather than better- as layers of bureaucracy keep her trapped to her hospital bed.
Warning to those with a queasy stomach; this is not a book to read while eating. For fans of Family Business by Jonathan Sims or the reader in search of a horror that leaves them wanting to take a long shower.
