When we talk about the work of Eric LaRocca, we tend to think in terms of the extreme, and when we think about extreme horror, we tend to think in terms of absolute physical depravity. But the kind of transgressive horror LaRocca seeks to sculpt, standing on the shoulders of giants in the field like Clive Barker and Kathe Koja, is about much more than flesh.
In Wretch, LaRocca’s latest novel, the heart and the soul are just as vital to the dread-laced puzzle as the body, and even seasoned LaRocca readers might be taken aback by just how tightly the author keeps hold of the extreme horror reins this time around. Patient, restrained, and woven throughout with notes of bleak beauty that whisper like dark silk, this is a new kind of Eric LaRocca novel, and it works quite well.
Simeon is a widower struggling to cope with the death of his husband, Jonathan. It’s eaten into his professional life, his relationship with his son and his ex, and consumed most of his waking thoughts. The grief is all-consuming, so when someone comes along with a promise to help, he’s naturally interested.
It’s through his grief that Simeon first learns about two things. One is a support group known as the Wretches, who are devoted to, among other things, finding the faces of their dead loved ones in everyday objects. The other is a mysterious person named Porcelain Khaw, a figure whispered about in the dark corners of the web, who’s able to reunite people with their dead loved ones, for a price.
If you follow grief horror as a subgenre, you recognize a lot of these ingredients right away, and that’s part of the book’s success. LaRocca doesn’t shy away from the conventional setup of this narrative, from the grieving loner mining the depths of his own soul to the dark bargain struck with a Mephistophelian figure who promises the world. These pieces lock into place perfectly because they’re designed to, but it’s what LaRocca does next that sets Wretch apart.
For longtime LaRocca readers, the book has many things you’ll enjoy, from strange posts on internet forums embedded right in the center of the book to moments of skin-crawling physical sensation that’ll jerk you right up out of your chair. But despite some of his more well-worn tropes, his familiar, somewhat formal prose, and his emphasis on transgression, this is also a different side of Eric LaRocca.
The deeper Simeon digs into potential avenues for salvation from his grief, the deeper LaRocca goes right along with him, digging deeper into one of the author’s most prominent themes: The fear of being unworthy. Simeon does not just miss his husband. He misses the certainty that came with a warm body next to his own, the blanket, however flimsy, which told him he was wanted, desired, loved. The more he excavates, the more he wonders, out loud on the page for all of us to read, if he was ever truly worthy of love. That makes his descent a dark one, but it also makes Porcelain’s gifts a bigger threat to the state of Simeon’s soul, adding a deep vein of suspense alongside the dread-packed poetry of the prose.
The result is a book that doesn’t quite go for the visceral throat with the same fury of LaRocca’s other novels, but replaces that fury with a certain horrific wisdom. In many ways, LaRocca has been exploring the same themes over and over since Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, his breakthrough novella. The dramatis personae changes, and the horror goes to different places, but LaRocca’s oeuvre retains a laser focus on questions of monstrousness, love, and how the two intertwine.
Wretch is perhaps his most mature treatment of the subject yet, and while some of the more jaw-dropping shocks have fallen away this time around, we’re rewarded instead with a dark jewel of elegant, atmospheric prose and deliciously restrained terror. This is a culmination of LaRocca’s work so far, and deserves to be savored.
Wretch is in bookstores everywhere on March 24.
