Negative Space

D.

Rating: really liked it
Yeager already liked my review, so I suppose that's a good sign. When I read his debut novel, Amydalatropolis, I was absolutely horrified. It was the first book to TRULY frighten me. I couldn't sleep, I devised various ways to get it out of my house (return it at B&N, donate it, throw it in the trash) but each method was much more effort than I was willing to expend, mostly because I was worried if someone FOUND the book and linked it to me, and started thinking I was some sort of deviant. This is another argument for another time, but one of those pesky stereotypes of readers is that they thoroughly enjoy and identify with the text their reading, and therefore the content of the book becomes associated with the reader's character. I can confirm that although I read and love transgressive literature, I'm about as a square as some maiden aunt in a Jane Austen novel.

Negative Space is a whole different beast. While I eventually was able to appreciate what Amydalatropolis did, by reframing 4chan posts as literary art, and revealing the absolute barbarism which lies at the "heart of darkness" which is the free, wild web, and that Yeager is perhaps the first novelist to ever UNDERSTAND the Internet and express this in a text worth reading--I adore Negative Space, because it does something wildly different exploration of a wildly different phenomena.

As a warning, this is more of a reflection than a review, so if you want a surface level review, look elsewhere, but here's my short traditional review: Fucking read it. It's probably the only novel WORTH reading which has come out this year in the United States. Robert Anton Wilson once said that books reviewed in the NYT are not worth reading and I began to understand why as I've been reading more books from small presses. If NYT reviewed Negative Space (which would be wonderful fiscally for Yeager, and I hope sometime they do), mass hysteria would break out over the book's plot and themes, and, additionally, Negative Space is basically a text which overturns any and all bourgeois ideals and schemes--something the NYT can't handle.

Negative Space recognizes the dystopia of America in the late teens (it's weird saying that) of the twenty-first century. Although Negative Space eschews materialist analysis, it is important to recognize that the mass suicides in the novel is, fractally at least, a sign of the times. When Tim Leary declared in the '60s that the young should tune in, turn on, and drop out, or whatever jibberish he was selling to the boomers, he was preaching to a mostly middle class audience of suburban rebels and black sheep. Think of William S. Burroughs, though associated with the beatniks: Burroughs COULD drop out, write, screw, kill his wife, and overturn any and all Western taboos because he was a trust fund kid--He could AFFORD to drop out. Fast forward fifty-five-ish years, and Yeager's youth are still following Leary's advice: They're tuned in the the absolute bleakness of America's future, and they drop out the only rational way they can--suicide.

While the high suicide rate in Kinsfield is associated with a darker, transcendental presence (we'll get there people, hang on) I think the novel has undertones of utter despair in regards to a new generation waking up to the complete rape of their future. One last tidbit on the materialist/social commentary fractal of this novel is Yeager's portrayal of the Kinsfield High school shooting. It lasts for a few pages, a media headline is read, the next chapter a petty, pathetic ceremony is held in remembrance--and then nothing. This, to me, not only signals the town's complete exhaustion with the amount of youth deaths, but also the rush of postmodern, Internet life, and how easily these tragedies, especially school shootings, can be brushed away when something else happens, or another school shooting occurs, and we forget immediately, as consumers of media, what happened last week or the week before in Kinsfield.

The brilliance of Negative Space, however, is its interaction with a nameless, transcendent source. The source of the misery may or may not have arisen from a local author's (Werner Baumhauer's) attempt to measure the weight of his soul, after committing suicide, but that's just hearsay. The fact of the matter is that Yeager never reveals what this phenomenon is caused by, but it is certain that teenagers will kill themselves, and somehow, there are forces beyond the perception of the characters and the readers which lay close to the borders of Kinsfield physically and metaphysically. This play of metaphysics is exactly what the modern novel needs, but pushes off with vehemence with emphasis on politics and crude philosophical materialism. The occult practices which begin sprouting with Lu and Arnold remind me of some many things, but the idea of "spirituality" after the fall of civilization. Given some of the more grotesque parts of the rituals (namely reproductive fluid) and the use of saints and Christ outside of their normative context, these practices remind me of folk religion, and some of the Gnostic sects which arose without the monolith of the Church to censure them.

The metaphysics of Yeager's Negative Space is not "New Age" or even "occult," even though Butler and many critics used the latter term. They are the religious reality of decline. There's almost something Spenglerian to it. It's an evolution of past spiritual beliefs into something brilliantly new, but also a digression to the archaic. Terence McKenna's "archaic revival" comes to mind. The "main" character Tyler is beyond a doubt a shamanic figure, in that he has put himself through some much bodily misery that he has to have some connection to the Other, just as indigenous shamans are picked by the trauma they endure, be it sickness or disability. It also doesn't help that WHORL, a purplish, hashish like convenience store bought drug, acts much like "snuff," psilocybin, and peyote do in Amazonian and North American indigenous rituals.

I could go on--if I was still studying English, I would publish a paper quickly about this work, because I do think Negative Space is one of the only novels to get in touch with the despairing fall we live in. There's that ridiculous occult/New Age/Wiccan phrase, "As above, so below," and I think on some level that's the easiest way to describe the worldview of Negative Space without delving into particulars. When the pagan gods fell out of favor, they were demonized by Christian sects, literally portrayed as demons. The gods, idols, and metaphysics of our civilization will become devils, and something new, archaic, young, fresh, transgressive, and energetic than the bloated corpse of Western Civilization, post-Christendom, will take its place.

Cheers, Mr. Yeager. I look forward to reading your future works.
____________________________________

Review forthcoming. The book we needed to ignite the reenchantment of American literature.

Plagued by Visions

Rating: really liked it
I just devoured the last two thirds while they devoured me. It feels heavy, highly unwell, and perhaps the most pristine depiction of a literary black hole. Absolutely incredible.

S̶e̶a̶n̶

Rating: really liked it
Horrifying in a compulsively readable way, Negative Space charts the erratic and disturbing movements of a group of teens living in a small New Hampshire town. For these kids life in this town is a stultifying existence, as evidenced by the copious amount of drugs they consume. They take a lot of drugs, and I mean a lot of drugs. Popping pills first thing in the morning, smoking weed all day long, winding down in the evening with some shrooms or acid…and then there is WHORL.

When WHORL appeared in the book, the first drug that came to my mind was salvia, a drug my friends and I started hearing about probably in the late 90s, early 2000s. First came the rumors of kids committing suicide after taking salvia, and then came actual confirmed cases. The reported details around the high obtained from this drug did not hold much appeal to me, and I think our only interest came from the fact that salvia was legal and relatively easy to access through the mail, unlike other drugs which had to be procured from sketchy dudes you never wanted to actually hang out with, like this novel's character Kai (spot on, that).

I never did try salvia, although if I’d discovered it earlier I probably would have. At any rate, in the novel WHORL is a drug that opens a portal to another realm of existence. This portal can facilitate access to supernatural powers. It’s unclear whether it is the user’s intention or simply their innate nature that determines whether the power will be used for good or evil, but regardless we see examples of both play out in the book. Yeager takes his time in fully explicating the significance of WHORL and the particulars of its use (and abuse), which is good because this uncertainty in the reader’s mind is what fuels the narrative engine.

Throughout the book Yeager displays a keen insight into youth culture and a sharp ear for dialogue. The characters are all somewhat archetypal in nature; this is fine, though, as it helps situate the reader in a teenage milieu many should find familiar, and Yeager imbues each teen with enough personality to make them engaging characters. The darkly poetic cast of his prose adds layers of texture to the narrative. It is a very dark story but not without its shafts of light. However, this is probably not a book recommended for parents of teenagers, unless you want to spend every night sleepless and gnawing your fingernails in the throes of anxiety.

Time compresses the older you get. Days turn to weeks turn to months turn to seasons turn to years, until your life resides in just one moment expanding forever, where each step and breath folds wrinkles into your face, carving minute, irreversible wounds between your joints. Pressing down the notches between your spine, driving your ankles and knees to ruin. I feel it now and it'll only be worse in the future.

Janie C.

Rating: really liked it
... all the way gone ...

David Peak

Rating: really liked it
Real magic. This is the future of horror.

J.J.

Rating: really liked it
I went into "Negative Space" not knowing what to expect other than the fact that it was about a bunch of disillusioned youths experimenting with drugs in a small town, and seeing as I'm ostensibly part of a group of those people, I thought "huh, that sounds interesting enough". What I was nooooot fucking expecting was a novel that reads like a Harmony Korine film smashed at light speed into an A24 horror movie injected with a barbed syringe of postmodern existential nihilism and a grotesque poetic sensibility that's all perfectly integrated into a story about the slow and mundane decay of simply being alive in the modern world. This is the real deal - horror literature that acknowledges the genre's history (the tropes are there well enough) yet pushes the artform forward in a way that feels intoxicatingly and truly new, something to help potentiate a push toward greater heights the genre has not yet reached. This is a book people will discover and talk about extensively and I can see influencing authors from here on, and it's exceedingly rare for me to formulate this feeling about a piece of work as I am engaging with it.

"Negative Space" is built around three woven narratives that ultimately tie back into the character arc of their peer and friend Tyler, who acts as the crux these narratives rely on. They're all eccentric, beautifully drawn characters, each with sharp, distinct voices and compelling arcs, and Yeager has an absolute mastery over sickeningly lyrical and dense imagery that pushes this nightmarish narrative forward. Events are fractured and surreal, distorted and mangled at points beyond recognition, with much of this anchored by the setting of Kinsfield itself. As I was reading it the town itself almost felt as dissociated and detached as the characters living in it, and the more I read the more the town's geography seemed to morph and shift in on itself (bolstered by the interweaving narratives) in kind of an "Inland Empire"-style compression, like the world itself was being squeezed (and there's lots of claustrophobic imagery in this, too, further aiding this interpretation). It's an oppressive book, monstrous in its scope yet simultaneously compact in a way that made me genuinely physically queasy, like a serpent coiling in on itself (and that's also an intentional use of words *wink wink*).

Talking about that all at length kind of strikes me as window dressing though. It isn't by any means - these aspects are radically important and a huge reason why this novel works as well as it does. The same goes for the characters of Jill, Ahmir, Tyler and (especially) Lu, who as I said are wonderfully written and characterized. But what really stuck with me about this book, what really crawled into my core and made me unable to stop reading to the point where I set aside an entire day to finish it, was how I *knew* these characters, and this dying town, and felt like I always have.

And this leads me to my next and the most cogent point I want to make - this is possibly the best (fictional) literary document on Generation Z ever written, or if there is one better, I either haven't read it or it hasn't been written yet (and I suspect the latter). This author clearly understands how we think and feel and the generational existential anxieties that plague us, to the point where I at times felt like I was reading out of a diary from someone my age or a few years younger. Sure, there's the surface level stuff - references to Discord and usage of modern slang and references to "The Last of Us" and trap music etcetera, but it probes much deeper than that. I see myself in Jill's existential despair over connection and finding meaning, I see myself in Lu's neurodivergence and reckoning with gender identity, I even see myself in the aimless frustration and anger of Ahmir and the anarchistic goth rebellious streak of Tyler that defines him (for as vile as he is).

I felt like I knew these characters so well, because I essentially *do*. I've not only met Tylers and Ahmirs and Jills and Lus, I've hung out with them, I've smoked weed and done psychedelics and ate cough medicine with them, I've gone to parties with them, waxed philosophical with them and made dear friends with them and on and on. Not to say my friends are anywhere as fucked up as some of the characters in the book, but they come from the same place of youthful existential malaise unique to the 21st century, and looking at many aspects of them was like looking at a mirror into my own life. I'm one of them, too, and while I obviously can't speak for everyone in a generation there is between me and my friends always this shared feeling of awareness toward the cosmic doom we're all seemingly hurdling to, this doom we face with reckless abandon because so many of our other options feel expended in the face of a future that more or less looks to be completely fucked. It's that exact feeling of knowing that we live in dying small towns in a late stage capitalist hellscape that's slowly killing us, and all we can do is face against the coming eye of the storm with the late-night comforts of recreational drugs, video games, cartoons, fringe politics - and each other.

And that's why this book is as terrifying to me as it is. It's not just because of the violence and hallucinatory narrative, or the grotesque occult leanings and bodily disfigurements and subtle gestures at cosmic horror (brilliantly done in a lowkey, simmering fashion that disquiets the gut slowly the way all the best cosmicism does, as well as modernizes the genre better than even the other greats of weird fiction this century) - it's the fact that B.R. Yeager understands and empathizes with the bleakness clouding our generation and the dark uncertainty of our future, and its this uncertainty that shrouds every page of "Negative Space" like a veil. We are constantly plugged in, constantly desensitized, constantly tuned into one unspeakable tragedy after the next, battering our brains until we are numb and the capitalist zeitgeist swoops in and siphons what remains of the life from us as we fight between idealism and nihilism while teetering on the precipice of total collapse. It is a future we must fight, and we do, but one that at worst feels like we are woefully unequipped to handle. How, after all, do young disillusioned people fight with real pushback against a global system that has failed us and the grind of a machine that profits from and rewards violence? How can well-meaning individuals with no institutional standing hope to challenge hegemonic power structures that are upheld by the ruling class we have nothing in common with? How can we do all this and more when all of us struggle the way Jill, Lu, etc. struggle so potently, every single day, even when the suicide count racks up and the black strands come to claim us all?

I'm not hopeless (or a "doomer" as one in my generation might say). I don't think B.R. Yeager is either, nor do I think that was the message intended to be gleamed from this book. I believe a better future is possible, but aside from theory and praxis, I truly do not know the answers to the anxieties that plague us, and that is what makes "Negative Space" scarier than any creature feature or "nobleman discovering dark secret" type story. It reflects the reality of a future that, while not devoid of the possibility of change, seems relentlessly despairing, and it does not shy away from portraying this in all its ugliness and uncertainty. I don't know what the future holds. Nor do Jill, Lu, Tyler, Ahmir, my friends, anyone. I do know, however, that this book is terrifying, not only for its surface level horrors, but also because of how it shines a reflective mirror I don't want to look at - a mirror of me, my friends, my family, our future, and the future of this world and where humankind is going.

I don't think I will be sleeping soundly tonight. Make way for the new generation - B.R. Yeager is at the frontlines, and hopefully, if I can muster the talent and courage to make my voice and the voice of the people with less privilege and similar anxieties to me heard, I'll be right there with him.

"Someday I'll wake up and it'll be like my life's already over, because it'll be dozens of years from now already and I'm still the same. Sets of mirrors facing each other, expanding space and me and every moment I've been here. Nobody knows me, because I haven't left anything for them, and I can't stand to look half of them in the eye."

Review 3/30/'22:

(view spoiler)[

(Full spoilers for this review! Stick with the above one only if you haven't read and don't want to be spoiled)

God. Damn. As magnetic and impossible to stop reading as it was on first run, there is just something so commanding about this novel’s presence that I can’t help but be possessed to walk through this nightmare until I make it out the other end wholesale. This is my second read and it really illuminated a lot that the first couldn’t; I feel like an eventual third read might be the key to unlocking this and its wealth of mysteries even further. My first review really got a lot to the heart of why this book works for me so well from a personal perspective, so for this one I’ll take a more unorthodox approach and jot down a few disorganized thoughts I gleamed from this read, and try to vaguely thread them together. Alright, here goes.

-I think it finally hit me this time just how damn STRIKING Yeager’s prose is. Most of his sentences are blunt, spiny and barely-lucid, but its through this bluntness combined with the viscerality of his imagery that the prose takes on a brutally stark poetic register. He knows exactly when to control his prose and the rhythm of his narrative and there are so damn many lines and passages in this that just stick with me to my core. Tyler’s musing about the planet’s nerve endings, Ahmir’s inner monologues on aging, Jill’s comment near the end about how a distant storm looks like a plague of flies, like my god it’s all just so arresting and raw and never once feels unconvincing, and there are too many of these to name; I’ve probably highlighted like half the book on this read and I have no doubt I will only notice more nuances and striking details in the future

-In general I don’t think I’ve like…ever read a horror novel that’s as burned into the fabric of my brain as this one tbh?? The unique writing vivifies every incident and I don’t think there was a single scene from my first reading that I forgot, but everything on reread STILL took me by surprise and many of it hit even harder than last time. Most of my memories even with books I love are in the abstract or in pivotal scenes but every scene here is stamped into my brain to a very rare extent only summoned by the most vivid writing and even when describing something inconsequential, the writing is memorable

-Lu’s story hit me even harder this time around and the ending of her arc, which confused me at first, felt even more brilliant, but it’s just everything about Lu I can’t get enough of; the genderfluidity and how it’s emblematic of the divide between who she IS and who everyone around her WANTS her to be and how this split is both physical and spiritual in a sense, and the fact she sees the world not through events but more like Feelings and Sensations that comprise events. Lu’s character works in a way that makes her abstract and intangible and at once the most complete person of the four protagonists because she is the only one who actually HAS an identity that is independent of the influence of others, fluid as it is, and it is the one thing she was able to surpass Tyler at, who never reached the “ascension” he so desperately desired while Lu on the other hand bursts from her cocoon (albeit in the most left-field sense). I want to write a lot more about her but I am going to need to ruminate even further because nothing short of an essay would encompass everything I feel abt Lu lmao

-Speaking of Lu’s ending, it seems to me that the story the “dot” tells her is one continuous story told in its fragmentary dialogue?? I have to go back and read these passages to see if they all line up together to make something cohesive; I think Yeager’s use of this technique in “Amygdalatropolis” might hint that this is also being applied here

-Speaking of the protagonists, holy FUCK did Ahmir really open up to me as a character on this read. First time around he kind of comes off as the black sheep, especially since the novel’s midpoint moves away from him for quite some time (a writing decision which I also understood a lot more potently this time around) but I really got a much better sense of him and his place in the narrative this time. On the surface he’s the conduit for us to viewing the direct madness of Tyler’s occult obsessions but it illustrates just how damn tragic Ahmir actually is despite being a dickhead who occasionally deserves some measure of scorn. Regardless of his toxicity it really hit this run how Ahmir is COMPLETELY codependent on Tyler from the beginning to the end (whereas Lu, and to a different extent Jill, are able to break away at some point), and he has very little identity outside of Tyler because of the immeasurable influence Tyler had over him their entire lives, convincing him that he isn’t supposed to have an identity outside of their relationship, that he exists as a conduit for him and nothing more. And this is complicated even further because Ahmir views Tyler both as a mentor/fatherly figure (which he never had) *and* as a lover and a peer because he knows both of these things to be true simultaneously as it is all he has ever known. Tyler, being the only person Ahmir can trust, is free to use this to his advantage and has done so possibly the entire time they have known each other, something which Ahmir becomes increasingly aware of the more deranged and dangerous Tyler becomes; but in the end despite his growing self-awareness is STILL unable to stay away from Tyler because he is at once Ahmir’s poison and his antidote and Ahmir knows this, but the toxic comfort of Tyler is the only thing he has in his life of any emotional substance no matter how much it destroys him. Like, goddamn. Even just beyond that, his musings on aging and time, the fear of life slipping through his fingers and being completely forgotten really hit hard too; there’s so much here I missed the first time, probably by design because he is the least pronounced of the protagonists, but damn that really was a facade for character writing as vivid, deeply felt and tragic as the other three

-The side characters really popped off the page this time too and practically all of them are memorable even those who get less than half the time of the four central characters. There’s a lot of personality established even in minor narrative strokes; for example despite the ambiguity surrounding what’s really happening in Kennedy’s life what we do see communicates so much about her and a tragic reality that’s central to another story and Jill brushing it off because of her own fixation on Tyler makes it hit even harder; or Arnie’s slow descent from a sort of Christ figure for Lu that eventually deteriorates because of the natural consequences of drug use and communication with forces beyond our control and comprehension, showing that he’s just a human after all; or even Marlon, who despite not having much of an arc is still necessary for being a decent dude balancing out the darkness and animosity of his friends, making his death and its brutality even more poignant. This world is just so vivid and Kinsfield feels so alive despite the death and rot that infects and swallows it

-God the scenes with Jill and her family and its breaking apart are damn hard to read. The awkward tension, the fissure between her and her father (who clearly cares for his daughter but also clearly does not see her as a whole person and using this as a means for control, whether consciously or not), the emotional numbness and downward spiral of Jill’s mom after his death and the way Jill cruelly comes to realize that even something as supposedly steadfast and unbreakable as “family” can wisp away and fall into entropy, it all just hits way close to the bone

-Entropy is an intentional choice of words because it feels like entropy is the core and foundation of the entire novel. The disintegration of everything into a slow fire, time’s inevitable charge, how everything and everyone you ever knew will one day be forgotten and there will be nothing left to mourn; it’s bleak no doubt, but it’s through these people Yeager creates immense empathy for these characters and hints that entropy might not necessarily be negative and possibly even a transcendental process (as we see at the end of Lu’s arc and, to a lesser extent, Jill’s)

-Overall I think this is just downright the most effective “kids on bikes” small town atmosphere I’ve ever encountered in a horror novel, ESPECIALLY because nothing is sugar coated and as I said in my original review that this dying do-nothing town and all the freaks, stoners, eccentrics and junkies that inhabit it are so tangentially familiar to me. Near the end Jill muses about how state lines are arbitrary, that it’s all really the same thing copy and pasted forever, and jfc if that doesn’t speak volumes about capitalism itself and the cycle the youth of today grow up within, the one where we are all aware of as the abyss of the future awaits us like a void in space and can do nothing but fight against this entropy through some kind of broad radical action, whether personal, empathetic and based on identity (Lu) or self-centered, desiring to escape that entropy all together through trying to achieve some spiritual apotheosis (Tyler), etc. I’ll reiterate that I still think this is probably the best fictional portrayal of misspent alienated youth I have ever seen, which is impressive especially considering how this was written in 2020 and those tropes have long been utilized throughout the decades, centuries; Yeager’s just feels so distinctly generational and urgent in a way I’ve never seen it done before

-I’ll have even more to say my next read, but for now, I’ll add to the unconventional nature of this review by ending off with a sales pitch: a non-linear cosmic horror coming-of-age story written like a volatile twenty-year old version of William Burroughs was raised on a steady diet of messageboard culture, internet hip hop, and cough syrup and street pills instead of heroin. Any of that sound good? Then what are you waiting for?

(hide spoiler)]

Mold Faith

Rating: really liked it
Heirs to Molloy and Thomas the Obscure, Yeager's characters are drill bits digging away, maybe fruitlessly, at the alienation and brain-dead phenomenology of lived experience that saturate contemporary life.

Yeager devilishly subverts what at first feels like a formulaic, pulpy, teen-horror story, and even at the early stage of its narrative it is engaging.

This book is intelligent, because it is subtle; esoteric, because it is subtle; and queer, because it is excessive beyond identity.

Negative Space is more than worth your time; you may not be worth *its* time. It's something worth chewing on. I apologize for my vague praise, but it's all my pea-brain can offer.

Read my full review here:

https://www.wellerbookworks.com/inorg...

Maggie Siebert

Rating: really liked it
this book will fuck you senseless and make you believe in god again

Joe Bielecki

Rating: really liked it
This is one of those books you never want to end. The characters live and breathe and ooze into and all over you. It feels like a dream. It is horrifying in a way that feels familiar.

Brooks Sterritt

Rating: really liked it
"Aw shit yeah I'm back from the dead."

Alexandra

Rating: really liked it
Every review says this book is the future of horror. That's because it's true.
A rich experimental writing style weaving together age old Satanic-panic fears and their modern day manifestation.
Death, drugs, magic, gods, forums, wannabe rappers, etc. I can't remember the last time a book sucked my into its world and spooked me this well in a long time.

"The truth will never make sense unless you force it to."

Hail Hydra! ~Dave Anderson~

Rating: really liked it
But I’ve given up on there being a story other than what they say about me now. I will lie down beside her, watching her dreams, looking for my own, until her body falls away. She can’t see me as her body peels away, leaving only a sheet of curling strings. I’ll never see her again but I’ll always remember what she meant to me.

Lee

Rating: really liked it
(4.5) The vast distance between US adults and their children who are far less deluded than their parents, and far more acclimated to a much more terrifying present and future. The expanding universe as metaphor for the stretching fabric of family-led society and cohesion. Lost souls that often don't want to be found. Very disturbing and full of wrenching truth.

Michael Hicks

Rating: really liked it
B.R. Yeager's Negative Space is an intensely bleak, but supremely fascinating, work of coming-of-age weird cosmic horror. Focused on a group of high school friends (kinda-sorta "friends" for the most part), it deals heavily with topics like depression, self-mutilation, suicidal ideation, drug abuse, abusive relationships, and self-destruction. It's a dark, demanding, and challenging work. It's also an intensely compelling and consistently fascinating page-turner.

The town of Kinsfield, New Hampshire is much like any other suburbia. What separates it from other small towns of its ilk are the uncommonly high number of teenage suicides, a fact recognized by an online message board tracking this peculiar phenomena. Also keenly aware of these troubles are Tyler, a mentally ill teen addicted to an odd plant-based chew called WHORL, a necessary ingredient to the occult practices he ritualistically performs. As his mania worsens, his relationships with Jill and Ahmir suffer under the strain and grow increasingly toxic. And all the while, the Kinsfield body count continues to rise...

Yeager depicts several shocking scenes with aplomb, but the real brutality here lies within these characters and their complicated dynamics with one another. Tyler binds these people together, but none of them really like each other, and each become propped up by their various dependencies. Both Jill and Ahmir love Tyler, to their own detriment, and the boy proves to be every bit as poisonous to them as the copious amounts of drugs they all consume just to get through another day of life.

I'm hesitant to say much more about Negative Space for a few reasons, and not simply because of possible spoilers. As I said earlier, this book is a challenging read and it demands scrutiny. I'm not entirely sure I understood everything or even caught all of Yeager's nuances during my first read, and I suspect this book would open itself up more with a second read-through in order to really closely examine all the various threads and opaque connections. While it's not nearly as experimental or demanding as the ergodic House of Leaves, Negative Space still feels apiece with Mark Z. Danielewski's renowned horror novel with its occasionally brief epistolary detours into message board posts, text messages, news articles, and book quotations.

While none of these instances require a mirror to read or for the book to be held upside down, or otherwise defy replication for its Kindle edition, Yeager's work does require serious effort to make sense of its story and to piece together the narrative as relayed through multiple narrators. We are, at least, told who is who, but the "when" for at least some of these characters in some moments just might be a bit questionable. The climax, fittingly, is downright psychedelic, on top of being strange, weird, and occasionally horrifying. That, in fact, sums up the bulk of Negative Space to a T.

Samantha

Rating: really liked it
*Trigger Warning: Suicide, self-harm, animal harm.*

I wish I could give this an even higher rating than 5/5, something that transcends the confines of this rating system to match the theme of this unbelievable novel.

I was absolutely sucked into this book from the first page. If you're like me and appreciate novels written about teen angst, the MUCH darker side of growing up and the endless possibilities that go with that topic, this is unabashedly for you. This story is about drug-addled, affluent, complacent teenagers in a town with a disproportionate amount of suicides. These kids are so used to it that they run to see the hanging bodies of people they know so that they can take pictures and share them on social media without delay. When Tyler, one of the particularly disturbed teens, begins to wonder about the pattern of the suicides, he delves into some occult-like (but still pretty scientific-sounding) books and learns about a drug and a ritual that will change his world and that of those around him.

This book transcends time by being in the here and now, the future, and the past all at once.

This book transcends sexuality by presenting these teens as having seemingly no preference in who they love, are with, and are themselves (there is even a character who is often referred to as 'she' and 'he,' making it hard for the reader to know exactly who or what this person identifies as).

This book transcends space by reaching into other dimensions and pulling gods, saints, and nameless (terrifying) black 'string' out of it.

This book transcends feelings too by presenting you with imagery that can make anyone reading it experience synesthesia (Ex. "Arnie slurred his voice all alabaster when he really felt something").

The name of the book itself is never directly addressed (which makes sense, since negative space is generally not directly addressed), yet it encompasses all that you experience and see in this book perfectly when you realize the real subjects might not be the teens, but everything that is going on around them to affect them.

I read aloud many parts of this book because they were so disturbing and intriguing to me. There is one section where a book is being read by one of the characters and the excerpt pertains to corn seedlings releasing a pheromone when they are being eaten by caterpillars, which draws in wasps to eat the caterpillars. So it is forcing the wasps to do the bidding of the seedlings without the wasp being aware that they are being manipulated. Then it asks the question of what that means for humanity and how people can manipulate other people for their own ends, making the person being manipulated think that the idea came from their own head and not some external source. Can you think of anything more terrifying than realizing how easily we can become the puppets of external sources, both human and supernatural?

Along with this existential dread is also the pain of being a teenager in a world where there is only drugs, sex, and death constantly surrounding you. Social media plays a huge part here too in spreading the disease of suicide and darkness. It is frightening to watch how much the teenagers rely on it and all the innocence that can be destroyed through the exploration of its unlit corners.

This specific quote made me ache inside, "I dreamed about a supercomputer that could erase anything in existence. First I erased all the spiders. Then I erased all the people, including myself. I wasn't there anymore, but I could still think and remember, and I wept and wept, wanting to be all the way gone."

I honestly felt anxious reading this book, almost like I could slip into a depression that is deep and unrelenting due to how well it is written and how much it brought back memories of my own teen angst and loneliness. It is so real and tangible and there is so much psychedelic madness present here that it is hard to escape. After finishing this book and trying to go to bed, I thought I heard wasps buzzing in my room. I thought I saw black, sticky string cascading from the ceiling onto my bed like soft cobwebs. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep.

A huge thank you to B.R. Yeager for providing Horrorbound.net with a copy of his book for review. My review is coming soon to Horrorbound!