Synopsis
From the author of MARY and NESTLINGS…A young musician finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside.
Review
The biggest thanks to Shortwave for getting this eARC in my hands!
Anyone who has spent any length of time in a car, traveling from one place to the next, has probably been given the luxury (or plague) of time to think. Time to take in the world flying by around you, time to contemplate the music on the radio, time to wonder about the complexities of life that befuddle you in the here and now. But, the time comes when the fuel gets low, too many bug splats have dirtied the windshield, and your bladder may just need some relief after that Big Gulp you downed. And what is the single solution to every one of these demands? The blessed rest stop, a pillar of in-between spaces, a repository of resources. Nat Cassidy pens an incredibly thought-provoking, blood-soaked tale of such a place and a man whose life is forever changed in a gas station.
In his previous full-length works, it is abundantly clear that Nat Cassidy is a capable author who can juggle numerous themes, motifs, and ideas in a sea of raging horror. Both Mary and Nestlings are captivating stories that function phenomenally on a surface level of the genre with no shortage of gore and heartbreak to execute terror. And of course, a scratch under the surface of each of these novels reveals much more subliminal horrors of humanity whether it’s aging, parenthood, or coming to terms with one’s own identity. However, Rest Stop is a novella, coming in at 160 pages, and manages to pull off this same impressive feat.
Abe is a man on the road who just wants to listen to his yacht rock (relatable) and get some distance from those thoughts that just won’t leave him alone. Like how the girl he’s into just started dating his friend and bandmate. Or how his elderly Jewish grandmother suffered from a stroke. Or how this same elderly Jewish grandmother has always been really hard on him, imparting sentiments of her own upbringing shrouded in suffering as a girl in Poland. All of these tumultuous thoughts rear their ugly head on a late-night drive that lands Abe in a gas station, a gas station bathroom more specifically. Only Abe cannot leave said bathroom. And things only get worse (and much more creepy, crawly, goopy) from here.
As mentioned previously, like Cassidy’s other works, Rest Stop is a markedly compelling read that is nearly impossible to put down. He hits all the right beats that will leave you wincing, audibly saying “ewww,” or making you want to take a shower as any horror novella set in a gas station bathroom should do. But more importantly, Cassidy ingrains an almost cosmic sense of morality in these pages. Abe’s will to survive the insanity that unfolds before him takes a poetic tone concerning right, wrong, and the liminality of those places, not unlike a rest stop. The levels of intentionality that Cassidy utilizes in Abe’s struggle to survive are nothing short of stunning, making this the kind of story that persists and demands further examination. In short, literally and figuratively, it’s bloody brilliant.
Written in between Mary and Nestlings, Rest Stop feels like just that for Nat Cassidy, in a profound, creative sense that gives him to space to do what he does best. This is a novella that explores the unending possibilities of limbo, the shades of gray that define a life. Abe’s ties to his Jewish faith and familial trauma bleed into his own hemorrhaging wound of survival, all within the confines of a gas station bathroom. Bold, unabashedly bloody, and brimming with greater meaning, Rest Stop is Nat Cassidy at his best.
Rest Stop by Nat Cassidy releases on October 15th from Shortwave Books. If you would like to support them directly, you can preorder here: https://shop.shortwavepublishing.com/products/rest-stop-a-novella-paperback
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