"Negative Space" by B.R. Yeager. A chilling review.

Oof.

I’ve just finished a cold plunge into the nightmare that is B.R. Yeager’s novel, “Negative Space.” I walked away with the shaken feeling of having survived a near-death experience. Truly, this book breathed new life into horror for me. It lets horror be what it needs to be—transgressive, lawless and unrelentingly dark.

The tale is set in a fictional New England town and follows three teenagers – Lu, Jill, and Ahmir – as they descend into an endless cycle of addiction and depression. These kids are scraping by in broken homes, already too jaded for their years. But then a hallucinogenic new drug called “whorl” takes over their town, provoking an epidemic of teenage suicides. The drug turns reality into a slipstream nightmare, allowing users to bleed into each other’s consciousnesses, to commune with the dead and invoke the things which linger in the dark. “Whorl” opens the doorway to Hell for these three kids, fueling their boredom and curiosity with grisly gifts of death and mayhem.

Or maybe “whorl” is nothing but a trippy drug, making sad kids do bad things. A collective psychosis, if you choose to believe so.

You’ll never know.

This book moves at a clipped pace with short chapters that read like vignettes, jumping between narrators and timelines. The plot comes together like a loose collage, never ending to tie itself neatly up.

Honestly, though, the story here takes second place to the writing. Yeager is a talented wordsmith. His beautiful, haunting prose feels like black magic, like some incantation binding your eyes to the page. Somehow, he captures the melodramatic voice of these teenage kids with a cold and clear-eyed apathy, the kind of indifference born of deep, brutal trauma. The result is something achingly painful, like McCarthy waxing horror poetic. It has a kind of stopping power that makes you feel like your blood ran cold. Turning each page is a continuous drip of sweet exhilaration and dread.

Let’s be clear, though. This book is not for everyone. If you’re dealing with mental health issues, or suicidal thoughts, or addiction, you should probably steer clear of this novel.

But if you’re a jaded reader like me, “Negative Space” is here to remind us that literature can still make us feel a certain way. And isn’t that why we read horror?

Don’t we just want to know what’s down there, in the darkness?

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For those who are interested, here’s B.R. Yeager’s webpage: https://www.bryeager.com/books