Review: Itch! by Gemma Amor

Rating: 9/10

Josie is at rock bottom, living a haunted existence after returning to her isolated hometown on the edge of the Forest of Dean. But the tall, dense pine trees are not the only things casting shadows across her skin.
When Josie stumbles across a decaying, ant-infested body in the woods, she plummets into a downward spiral, facing uncomfortable truths about the victim and her own past – all whilst battling a growing infestation of her mind . . . and her flesh.
Desperate to solve the case, Josie scratches the surface of an age-old mystery – a masked predator stalks the forest around Ellwood, a place deeply gripped by folklore. As the village prepares for its annual festival, Josie gets closer and closer to unveiling a monster, and begins to ask herself:
Are these dark crawling insects leading her to uncover the truth? Or is she their next victim?

“Itch!” by Gemma Amor is not a novel that merely gets under your skin, but settles and lays eggs there before getting to work at gnawing its way out again. It writhes and thrums and chews, scuttles, crawls. God, I’m upsetting myself just thinking about it. A festering, pink amalgam of a brutal whodunit, small town folk horror and so, so many ants, true to its title “Itch!” itches in every sense of the word- uncomfortable, insistent, unrelenting, perversely satisfying. A fetid, feminist head-on collision between “The Wicker Man,” Moshfegh’s “Death in her Hands,” and something with legs like “Invasive,” by Chuck Wendig, this is absolutely my favourite from Amor so far, and it’s out from Hodder & Stoughton October 9th if you’re ant-sy to read it… just bring bug spray. 

We follow Josie who has returned to Gloucestershire following an abusive relationship. Her Dad has allowed her to move into the apartment, rent-free even, but is not the warmest man. Still, anything is an improvement from life with Lena. She has a modest routine, a nice job at the local pub, and a rather pleasant walk to get there each day. That fragile peace is shattered though when she finds Laurel Howell. Or what’s left of her… rotting, ant-infested Laurel Howell. With a dogged detective on her tail, and a relentless itch to scratch, Josie finds herself haunted, by the murder, by her past, and by the idea that something is burrowing under her skin. 

In “Itch!” Amor takes a rare look at same-sex abusive relationships, and more broadly, how trauma can reshape a person and how they think. For much of the novel, Josie’s head is occupied by two voices, one of which is Lena’s. It’s an acidic and persistent voice that sparks doubt and erodes confidence. Amor confronts this fearlessly, with Josie missing the good and the bad. I think it’s this grieving, bleeding ambivalence that makes her feel so real, so honest. The other voice is not one that puts her down so much as it flings her forward, headfirst and blindly, and that is the voice of the ants. After Laurel, Josie becomes convinced they’re in her ears and pores and every possible opening, and it’s truly horrifying. 

The town of Ellwood, which I’m delighted to learn does actually exist and does actually have a devil’s march, has a rich lore only truly comprehended by Old Jacob, who was certainly a favourite character for me. What we learn from him is that the murder of Laurel Howell is not unique, and that there is a long sexist history entwined with the town and their annual march. The supernatural ideology is a vessel for the cultural. Women silenced, women shamed, and now women murdered. Amor explores this in tandem with the expectation that women should nurture and cook and clean, as demonstrated by the step back Josie’s dad takes when they lose her mother, in addition to bend and compromise and apologise. Amor acknowledges this before defying it through characters like Angela and Josie herself.

An arthropod-infested riot of rot and rage and ruin, “Lord of Misrule,” goes feral and pink in Gemma Amor’s “Itch!” Let’s see here, we have bad-ass female characters, in spite of a deeply sexist history that has been allowed to repeat itself, we have gorgeous prose and break-neck pacing, we have an ending that broke and surprised and satisfied me, AND, if all that wasn’t enough? A dog. Check, check, check, check. For lack of a better word, “Itch!” is a doozy.