“The Alicia was so much smaller than most of the other buildings around her, and so much more interesting. She was special.” – Juan Martinez, ‘Extended Stay’
Being a person who believes borders are stupid and nationalism is outdated, I am strongly pro-immigration. More accurately, I’m pro-free movement of human beings. It would be nice if the country I lived in was the shining, welcoming land of promise it likes to pretend it is. Well, the room might look clean when the United States of America opens its doors. In reality, though, we’ve stuffed all of the unimaginable horror into the closets and baby, them closets is a-burstin.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
A book that approaches the idea of a haunted house—haunted hotel, scuse you—in a wholly new way. A book that synthesizes the terror of civil violence, the immigrant experience, service industry work (in this case, being a line cook and helping manage a hotel), family drama, and yawning, gaping cosmic horror into one 300-page stew. A book where sometimes I couldn’t tell what exactly what was going on—and neither could the characters. I’m talking, of course, about Extended Stay by Juan Martinez.
Look, CWs—intense ones—up front: this is a haunted house book, following siblings Alvaro and Carmen. But it begins with a massacre. The kind of massacre you’d normally find in Rushdie—Alvaro witnesses his mother and father and 10-year-old sister butchered by guerilla fighters in all the usual ways: machete slicing, rape, mutilation, forcing people to shoot their loved ones. It is well-written, but not fun to read. It’s sadly not all that unfamiliar or shocking if you read a lot of postcolonial literature, which I believe that you should do. The world is full of horror, we read to steel ourselves.
Speaking of horror!
Once you get past that initial scene, the book is a more “straightforward” horror book. Like I said up top, it can be confusing, the kind of book where you just hold on and trust the text. The confusion is also mirrored by Alvaro’s increasing delirium and the ways the hotel is infecting him. There are questions of guilt and culpability vs. Sometimes The World Just Dumps On You, there are some wonderfully-drawn tech-vested execs, there is a Very Good Dog, and, eventually, there is a gooey explosion of monstrosity that will either prevent this book from ever being made into a movie or be made into the slickest, slimiest horror this side of The Thing/Alien. This book is not great if you have a severe phobia of being trapped, but otherwise? Yeah man, read this book. Haunted hotels! Who’da thunk it!
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Goddamn if this Butcher Brown video on KEXP didn’t make me fall in love. Let’s go on a journey together, because these links are all me cleaning out my tabs for the stuff I think you’d think is most important.
Really enjoyed “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus,” by Rachael K. Jones in Lightspeed.
Sometimes there are poets I really really love, but then I realize oh no, I’ve only read one of their books. Hoa Nguyen is one of those poets—until I can get some time on the schedule to read another of her books, I’m reading online pubs. Here’s “Vietnam Ghost Story: Đà Lạt Lovers” in Poetry. What a volta on this one.
Trying to read a little more SFF this year, especially flash fiction. Enjoyed Ash Huang’s “A Superior Knot” in Lightspeed.
Staying in Lightspeed, “The Last Word” by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe is a wild ride.
Forever a good time to get in touch with your spiritual side and take a tour of the Badudio. Happy Friday, embrace witchcraft.
What’re you still doing here? Need more music? Of course you do. You think I’d leave you with one soul-cleansing video and not give you another? LISTEN TO THIS ASHLEY HENRY REMIX:
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Sincerely, I hope very much that there isn’t some sort of moldy cosmic nightmare living under wherever you work. And may your partner never lose a photo of any of their relatives. That seems to portend bad things. Have an unhaunted weekend!
Sorry you got an email,
Chris