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A review by twilliamson
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca
4.0
LaRocca's Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was a hit indie sensation when it first released in 2021, and its new repackaging--grouped here with "The Enchantment" and "You'll Find It's Like That All Over"--presents the story with two similar stories of desperate people doing strange and uncomfortable things.
It's easy to see why so many have loved LaRocca's original novella; but what draws me to this book is the combination of the novella and its "other misfortunes." These are stories of individuals whose lives have left holes in them that they are desperate to fill by any means necessary. "The Enchantment" definitely complements Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in that it works with very similar motifs, building on the drama of two characters whose needs are very different from one another. The last story in the collection, though, seems to have more in common with the recent Shudder film Speak No Evil than it does the other two stories in this collection, but still deals with characters incapable of facing their individual needs in correlation to the needs or desires of others.
LaRocca's character work in the two novellas are especially compelling, and it's interesting to see how his characters deal with similar concerns despite very different circumstances. There's a certain verisimilitude to seeing these figures spiral out of control, and the circumstances of each story fit in well with the genre of horror: it's all about watching as each character resorts to more and more extreme methods of coping with their very human problems.
LaRocca is an author to watch, and I think whole generations of horror readers will flock to his work as the questions he explores become increasingly relevant to our lived experience.
It's easy to see why so many have loved LaRocca's original novella; but what draws me to this book is the combination of the novella and its "other misfortunes." These are stories of individuals whose lives have left holes in them that they are desperate to fill by any means necessary. "The Enchantment" definitely complements Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in that it works with very similar motifs, building on the drama of two characters whose needs are very different from one another. The last story in the collection, though, seems to have more in common with the recent Shudder film Speak No Evil than it does the other two stories in this collection, but still deals with characters incapable of facing their individual needs in correlation to the needs or desires of others.
LaRocca's character work in the two novellas are especially compelling, and it's interesting to see how his characters deal with similar concerns despite very different circumstances. There's a certain verisimilitude to seeing these figures spiral out of control, and the circumstances of each story fit in well with the genre of horror: it's all about watching as each character resorts to more and more extreme methods of coping with their very human problems.
LaRocca is an author to watch, and I think whole generations of horror readers will flock to his work as the questions he explores become increasingly relevant to our lived experience.