Synopsis
They’re feeding on you too.
A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace, and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one.
From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns; from the claustrophobia of the Covid-19 pandemic to small-town Chesapeake USA, Clay McLeod Chapman takes universal fears of parenthood, addiction and political divisions and makes them uniquely his own.
Packed full of humanity, humour and above all, relentless creeping dread, Acquired Taste is a timely descent into the mind of one of modern horror’s finest authors.
Review
You can have a lot of fun by putting weird shit in your mouth. At least, that what it seems like Clay McLeod Chapman thinks anyway!
Acquired Taste is his latest curated collection of yummy morsels, all centred around the theme of consumption, greed, ingesting of evil, and characters eating things that never failed to creep me out. Or make me laugh! It’s a collection of stories that does make me question what Clay’s obsession with people eating strange things is all about, as these are all stories previously published over the years in various magazines, anthologies and collections. It’s very clearly a topic that has been with Chapman for a number of years, and the 25 works collected within Acquired Taste all do a brilliant job of exploring the different kinds of consumption that us as humans do, and in turn, how these obsessions consume our humanity.
I love Clay’s truly auteur-esque approach to his stories. I haven’t read as much of his works as I’d have liked, but it becomes very clear that all these stories have a certain flavour to them that ooze pure Chapman. Much like how you’d be able to identify that you’re watching a Lynch movie without seeing his name branded on the title card, I feel the same with Chapman. These stories are funny, absurd, off-kilter, dark, tragic, slimy, gross, bat-shit mad, sometimes all of these all at once. A throughline to many of these is a spectrum of oil spill like colours, and this imagery can be seen in many a story. It’s that corrupting vibrant swirl that we usually associate with manmade disasters at sea, and the loss of natural life alongside it, that creates a sense of greasy evil that infects and warps from the inside.
Baby Carrots is probably the funniest in this selection, and is a story that, if I was a betting man, I’d gamble my life savings on this being a tale first conceptualised by Clay’s children being obsessed with these little orange bastards. I’ll also never eat one the same way again. Sisterhood of the Salamander is a trippy tale in the vein of Agustina Bazterrica’s The Unworthy, or Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, surrounding an isolated nunnery and their penchant for axolotl, set against a mysterious backdrop of a world gone to ruin. Knockoffs is something only a father with a Pokemon/Furby/whatever-latest-fad loving child, and this is so obviously Clay’s way of venting his frustration on the addicting nature these faceless capitalist companies flood markets with this rubbish. But hey, at least they taste good!
But it’s not just yamming meat of dubious origins, as there are plenty of stories that describe a more metaphorical yearning for consumption. Pick of the Litter is a delightfully tricksy story about fathers in playgrounds with their children, with a nice message to start, until you scratch further. I knew what was going to happen in this one, and watching it unfurl like a black rose in spring was exciting to behold. Psychic Santa is a very hopeful, if horrifying story, of finding meaning to tragic ends, and the selfless acts these choices require.
I must shout out Spew of the News, which acts as the original concept to my favourite novel of this year, Wake Up And Open Your Eyes. Whilst this one unfolds much the same as the opening to the full novel – and contains much the same scathing commentary on modern news media – the ending is much more insidious and sticky. If another one of these stories in here was to be transformed into a full-length piece, I’d love to see (if it hasn’t happened already) Battlefield Seances receive this treatment. A historical horror of a travelling family, led by a hard patriarch, who traverse post-Civil War US to commune with the deceased and bring closure to their loved ones, is an idea just too full of opportunity to ignore!
I haven’t even gotten into the satisfyingly demonic Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key, or the pulpy fun of Who brings a baby? Or the satire of the twisted MAGA mind in Posterboard. Each story brings something unique and flavoursome to the table and turning the page onto a new tale brought me butterflies of anticipation at what the hell I’d experience next. Insightful, strange, hilarious and devastating, Acquired Taste is yet another triumph of horror literature for Clay McLeod Chapman!
Acquired Taste releases September 9th 2025 from Titan Books.
Thanks to Titan Books for sending me an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review!
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