Synopsis:
Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie-but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.
When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives-and reality-hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.
Review:
Neena Viel’s “Listen to Your Sister,” doesn’t so much debut as it does detonate, a horror hand grenade that demands to be heard, and leaves you riddled with shrapnel. Through the grime-covered lens of the uncanny and surreal- Viel delivers a fiendishly good debut that bites just as hard as it barks. If Erin E. Adams’ “Jackal,” was left marinating in the unholy bizarro stew of Gus Moreno’s “This Thing Between Us,” you may well find yourself left with this weird slice of social horror. Releasing February 4th from Titan in the UK and St. Martin’s Press in the US, this is the kind of novel that crawls into your brain, and makes itself at home.Compulsive, propulsive and scary as fuck, Viel examines fraying family ties, the burden of responsibility, and the importance of honesty, all within the dangerous, political climate of 2024. You’ll shiver, and snort, and savor every (increasingly strange) page.
Calla Williams is desperately trying to hold her life together- attempting to juggle a job she hates, with an awkward new relationship, with the weight of simply being a 25 year old trying to carve out her place in the world- a matter that is complicated entirely by her little brother. Jamie is a ticking time-bomb, overflowing with teenage swagger and reckless energy, forever towing the line between trouble and catastrophe, and in a constant battle with school, drugs and the law. To put it plainly, he does his older sister’s nut in. The middle child, Dre, is not much help, and seems incapable of picking up the phone or the slack. This, in combination with their dead father and incapable mother, means that the responsibility of the younger Williamses lies with Calla, who claims “It’s so hard keeping black boys alive.” She is plagued by nightmares, nightmares that begin to ring true when Jamie is rescued single-handedly by a strange little girl when taken down by a racist cop at a civil rights protest, and Dre is nearly beaten to a pulp by a young woman in a prom dress. The realization that they are no longer safe at home comes quick, and they hightail it to a low-budget BnB in Oregon, a cabin in the woods (where all horror stories go to die), but the malevolent force is not far behind, and when Calla recognises their temporary home from her night terrors, it seems that the siblings have not so much outrun terror as they have run into it.
This novel is a dysfunction smoothie. Every raw emotion, unfortunate event, crumbling relationship is poured into the Williams family’s pressure cooker, and Viel doesn’t hold back when it boils over… The fractured dynamic that the siblings have is evidence of how repeated trauma, hit after hit, can splinter somebody into 1000 resentful shards, which are often then aimed squarely at those we love. That being said though, this story is not one that is devoid of hope. When push comes to shove, their loyalty to one another is persistent, and whilst the book is not quite a laugh per minute, their sharp tongued banter occasionally surfaces, offering moments of comic relief which kind of feel like stolen breaths of air. It goes to show that in many cases, even broken bonds can have tensile strength.
Weird, raw, and razor-sharp, Neena Viel’s debut is a genre-blurring punch to the gut that made my hair stand on end and my ears prick up. It’s a part coming-of-age nightmare, part existential fever dream, that told me to shut up and pay attention. Fans of Grady Hendrix’s dark humor and the reality-warping edge of Blake Crouch will feel right at home in Neena Viel’s bizarro hellscape…California. I’m excited to see whatever the hell is next.
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