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A review by screamdogreads
Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling
4.0
And there, floating out of the darkness, is her face, her true face. Unmarred, familiar, vaguely concerned. It hovers just beside what she thought was her reflection. But when she shifts to line them up, the fake and the real, there is only her ruined face staring back at her again.
Last to Leave the Room is a speculative horror novel that quickly transforms into a gothic, medical horror story. As is typical of a traditional horror tale, this is a slow burning story, something that delicately unfurls itself, increasing in intensity until its weirdness dominates. Sci-fi and horror are so seamlessly blended to create an anxiety inducing novel (those scenes in the basement were nail-bitingly stressful to read) which borders a strange and very specific boundary, straddling a line between a sci-fi thriller, and a medical horror novel.
Towards the latter half of this novel, it becomes unhinged, unexpectedly splitting off into a rather strange narrative. If one singular novel could explain what it is to feel existential dread, this would be the one. This odd little story forces a cloying, claustrophobic feeling down the throat of its reader. This is where Starling excels, in worlds that suffocate and devour all who dare enter them.
Last to Leave the Room is a speculative horror novel that quickly transforms into a gothic, medical horror story. As is typical of a traditional horror tale, this is a slow burning story, something that delicately unfurls itself, increasing in intensity until its weirdness dominates. Sci-fi and horror are so seamlessly blended to create an anxiety inducing novel (those scenes in the basement were nail-bitingly stressful to read) which borders a strange and very specific boundary, straddling a line between a sci-fi thriller, and a medical horror novel.
Towards the latter half of this novel, it becomes unhinged, unexpectedly splitting off into a rather strange narrative. If one singular novel could explain what it is to feel existential dread, this would be the one. This odd little story forces a cloying, claustrophobic feeling down the throat of its reader. This is where Starling excels, in worlds that suffocate and devour all who dare enter them.
"As the sutures split, images flake from her mind like scabs. A needle, driven into the skin of her double, just to see her flinch. Dreams of vivisection, standing over her own body split open on a lab table. In every scene, she is the viewer, not the tormented. She has done this before. They can't be separated. They can never be separated. They are the same."
However, this novel truly shines when it casts its light upon the question of identity, on the individual, on what exactly, makes us, us. The world of doubles, doppelgängers, replica versions of ourselves - What a startling and unnerving thing to explore. Last to Leave the Room is a science heavy novel, one that's crafted to reward careful and patient readers. Certainly this is not a story for those that are squeamish, medical horrors are displayed with a clinical and cold brutality.
Our narrator is unreliable and almost detestable, what starts as a story of a sinking city, and a company trying to avoid a PR nightmare quickly descends into the maddening tale of a doctor losing her connection to reality. Isn't it such an overbearing thing, when horror is this crushing? Isn't it just so special, when horror is this consuming.
In her reflection, a yawning chasm of meat stares back at her where her eye should be. It's the first time she's seen it, though, she knew all along that it was there. But knowing and seeing are different, and now she leans in. The flesh is slick in parts, dried and clotted in others, and all of it is swollen, swollen, swollen. There are stitches, in the depths. They are not even.