Synopsis:
It’s not a sequel. It’s next in the sequence…
Kasper is tired of these extended family reunions. No matter what she does, she’s always the odd one out. She’s used to feeling outnumbered, but on this remote camping trip, those numbers keep changing.
Review:
Annie Neugebauer’s “Outsiders Sequence,” is nothing short of existentially torturous, these books a triad of mind-unspooling, paranoia-full ordeals that I have been either reading or thinking about since July last year when I read “The Extra.” I am, all at once, gutted it’s over, delighted that “The Spare,” is also a banger, and overwhelmingly committed to never going camping with my family ever again. In her latest, the third and final instalment in the sequence (unless of course there happens to be a mysterious, not quite right, fourth novella) Neugebauer takes a sledgehammer to reader’s brains- this is the uncanny and disconcerting done the best and most relentless that I’ve seen it, a sustained low-frequency hum of… wrongness. Neugebauer’s capacity to unsettle is staggering. I’m an eager beaver, this one is out from Shortwave Publishing (big up) March 9th next year, and you should all be very afraid.
This time we follow Kasper who is stuck in the wilderness with her extended family- horror enough, truly. She’s always found these trips challenging, forever feeling like the odd one out, the black sheep, the fish out of water and all those other idioms. Things are off to a cracking start, she didn’t get the memo about the family merch (again, horrific I tell you) and a couple of relatives seem pretty standoffish. But matching sweaters and chilly receptions quickly become the least of Kasper’s worries after a nasty accident and some of Neugebauer’s signature impossibilities and numerical peculiarities.
I’ll reiterate once more that the biggest strength of this sequence is the dread- Annie has it down to a fine art, and I could spend the rest of the review trying to convey to you that “The Spare,” would kill your great aunt, so stressful it is. But there’s more beyond the author’s knack for inducing migraines and making palms sweat, and its killer concept. There’s, beyond the grander psychological torment, a secondary horror here, a subtle, domestic one. In “The Other,” Neugebauer gives us a similar quiet terror on top of the doppelgangers- anxiety within relationships, how scary turning 30 is, and we get something similar in “The Spare.”
Kasper seems to be, fittingly perhaps, an outsider in her own family- her lack of Shultz Crew sweater may seem inconsequential, but it’s symptomatic of something long-standing and genuinely quite upsetting. She truly feels alienated and excluded, distant from her own family, where the lucky amongst us might assume that’s where we most belong by default. The horror of being surrounded by people and feeling alone, of not belonging is explored beautifully here, and it’s that nuance and sympathy that makes the eventual uncanny all the more potent.
A smart book, fit to conclude what has certainly become one of my favourite trilogies, “The Spare,” is gorgeous, ambiguous and the final nail in the coffin regarding my going camping. I am bereaved.
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