One Bloody Thing After Another

Jackie has a map of the city on the wall of her bedroom, with a green pin for each of her trees. She has a first-kiss tree and a broken-arm tree. She has a car-accident tree. There is a tree at the hospital where Jackie’s mother passed away into the long good night. When one of them gets cut down, Jackie doesn’t know what to do but she doesn’t let that stop her. She picks up the biggest rock she can carry and puts it through the window of a car. Smash. She intends to leave before the police arrive, but they’re early.Ann is Jackie’s best friend, but she’s got problems of her own. Her mother is chained up in the basement. How do you bring that up in casual conversation? “Oh, sorry I’ve been so distant, Jackie. My mother has more teeth than she’s supposed to, and she won’t eat anything that’s already dead.” Ann and her sister Margaret don’t have much of a choice here. Their mother needs to be fed. It isn’t easy but this is family. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’ll be okay as long as Margaret and Ann still have each other.Add in a cantankerous old man, his powerfully stupid dog, a headless ghost, a lesbian crush and a few unsettling visits from Jackie’s own dead mother, and you’ll find that One Bloody Thing After Another is a different sort of horror novel from the ones you’re used to. It’s as sad and funny as it is frightening, and it is as much about the way families rely on each other as it is about blood being drooled on the carpet. Though, to be honest, there is a lot of blood being drooled on the carpet.

From Publishers Weekly

Canadian author Comeau, best known for his darkly surreal Web comic, A Softer World, turns his adaptable talents to overt horror in this oddly touching novel of ghosts, friendship, bloody secrets, and family relationships. Jackie is infatuated with her best friend, Ann, but hides her feelings rather than risk rejection. Ann has more dramatic problems: her mother, an increasingly ravenous and highly infectious supernatural creature, demands that Ann supply her with live prey. Distracted by their personal obsessions, Ann and Jackie very nearly occupy different novels despite their frequent physical proximity; Jackie wanders through a tale of teen lesbian romance, while Ann struggles to survive the dark horror of monstrous transformation. A staccato structure allows for surprising intricacy in so few pages, and the crescendos of terror are leavened by moments of unexpected humor and warmth. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Comeau has written what must be the least scary book starring people who are inexplicably transformed into hideous, infant-gobbling beasts and a decapitated ghost brandishing her blood-vomiting head in the hallways of a retirement home. But, then again, you won’t see all that many horror novels described as thoughtful and touching, either. So we’re off the map anyway, which is precisely where Comeau likes to be. A loosely connected trio of plot strands follow two sisters whose mother is chained up in the basement, hungry for live flesh; an obsessive, violently tempered teen traumatized by the ghost of her dead mother; and an old man and his old dog who stoically wade among all the crazies. The tone is poignant, sometimes wistful, and deadpan funny, and the last chapter promises that “Everyone gets their happy ending,” though some might disagree with Comeau on just what happy means. The novel is more eccentric than gory, and what’s really shocking about it is that all the mayhem is finally about family ties, both severed and reconnected. --Ian Chipman

Publishers Weekly

“Canadian author Comeau, best known for his darkly surreal Web comic, A Softer World, turns his adaptable talents to overt horror in this oddly touching novel of ghosts, friendship, bloody secrets, and family relationships.… A staccato structure allows for surprising intricacy in so few pages, and the crescendos of terror are leavened by moments of unexpected humor and warmth.”

Toronto Star

“Yet for all the violence and unsettling imagery (and we may be thankful that the worst of the very bad things happen offstage), we feel sympathy for these characters; in large part because it is their sympathy for others that leads to so much trouble.… As a fast-paced, fragmented tale of terror for an accelerated culture, it’s bloody good.”

Booklist

“The tone is poignant, sometimes wistful, and deadpan funny … The novel is more eccentric than gory, and what’s really shocking about it is that all the mayhem is finally about family ties, both severed and reconnected.”

many less than a page

“The gore and supernatural elements are a fitting complement to [Comeau’s] characteristic blend of pathos and black humour. Comeau’s prose is simple and direct, and the short chapters

Fangoria

“It is [Comeau’s] innate ability to imbue the horrific with a sense of fragile humanity that makes this book a must-read.… It doesn’t get much lovelier-and bloodier-than this.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The window in the upstairs hallway is open. No wonder it was so cold last night. Ann slides it closed, hard, and goes down to the kitchen. There’s a bowl of cereal laid out for her breakfast, and Ann’s younger sister Margaret is already shoveling food into her face. Milk dribbles down Margaret’s chin. There’s cereal all over the tabletop. “You’re disgusting,” Ann says. “Your friends will wait for you, you know. You don’t have to choke it down like that.” “Hey, go slow,” their mother says, coming into the kitchen. She’s dressed up, in a gray-and-white suit, and she twirls once for her daughters. “What do you think?” she says. “Professional? Hire-able? Is the red scarf too much?” “You look great, Mom,” Ann tells her. Margaret just keeps eating. Their mother bends down to get something from the floor. It’s a couple seconds before Ann realizes that her mother hasn’t come up again. She leans over, and sees that her mom wasn’t picking something up at all. She’s crouched down, holding a hand to her throat. “Are you okay?” Ann says. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, Ann.” Her mother clears her throat. “Sorry. I just have something. . . .” she clears her throat again louder, and then stands up, smiling. She clears her throat again. Then again. Even Margaret is looking up from her cereal. Their mother coughs. And then she coughs harder. There’s a bit of blood on her lips now. She smiles. “Wish me luck today!” she says. ~ Ann’s mother was perfectly qualified, but her interview did not go well. Afterward, she ran out of the conference room holding her red scarf over her mouth, leaving two men, Jeff and Alex, sitting in silence for a long time. Between the two of them they have interviewed thousands of men and women for various jobs. It has never before gone so ridiculously badly. They’re just sitting there. They should clean this up and call the next applicant. They’re on a schedule, after all. But instead they sit in silence. Alex looks at the door where she ran out, and then he looks at the wet, bloody chunk of god-knows-what sitting on the table in front of them. The thing she coughed up, partway through the interview. That poor woman. “That did not go well,” Jeff says. He can joke because none of the blood landed on him.

About the Author

Joey Comeau writes the comic A Softer World, which has appeared in The Guardian and been profiled in Rolling Stone, and which Publishers Weekly called “subtle and dramatic.” His self-published first novel, Lockpick Pornography, sold out its print run of 1,000 books in just three months. In 2007 he published It’s Too Late to Say I’m Sorry, a collection of short stories. Overqualified (ECW, 2009) is in its third printing. The A Softer World website (asofterworld.com) has been online since 2003 and has an average daily readership of 70,000 people worldwide. Comeau lives in Toronto, ON.

Reviews

News