PositivePop Matters... blends southern gothic, folk, and Lovecraftian horror seamlessly ... While Davidson doesn’t shy away from violence and body horror — there is ample grim and gory content to be had — he steers clear of gratuitous acts. Everything is mindfully executed, resulting in an unflinching yet honest exploration of violence, sacrifice, and healing. The emotional palette is varied, exploring trauma and violence, the infectious nature of greed and power, and the grief and devastation left in their wake ... has its fair share of tropes...but Davidson puts in the work to flesh each trope into fully realized characters and plot points. His keen eye for human interaction and the ability to inject specificity into day-to-day disputes ensures most characters are dynamic human beings. However, with such a large cast of characters, some dimensionality inevitably slips through the cracks ... Davidson’s descriptive yet staccato writing style helps balance The Hollow Kind‘s pace, so it never gets too far ahead of itself — somewhat of a rarity in the horror genre. The beginning crawls along because of the necessary backstory, but once it’s past, the dread builds slowly but steadily. The pacing remains nearly perfect until the end of The Hollow Kind, which ends abruptly. Compared to the time we spend with the rest of the story, the ending feels too quickly cut off ... A visceral story that weaves past and present together, The Hollow Kind is a well-crafted tale about secrets that refuse to stay hidden, the weight of past sins, and redemption. With atmospheric imagery, compelling characters, and a gripping premise, Davidson proves why horror is one of the most effective genres for exploring interpersonal conflict and the complicated nature of familial relationships.
Ling Ma
RavePopMatters[Ma] proves adept at various genres ... Fervently original and imaginative, Ma plays with this idea of marginal, emotional snapshots throughout the eight short stories in this collection ... To read Ma’s work is to step into her meticulously crafted worlds where fantasy and reality blur and bleed into one another. Ma grounds the fantastical in tangibility, often in the form of emotions, relationships, and relatable life events — a painful break-up, a toxic friend, immigrant parents, and a relationship between mother and daughter. Ma’s fiction finds mundanity in the absurd and the absurd in mundanity. Through a surrealistic lens, she reflects our nature, and we cannot look away. Like the bliss montage that this story collection is named after, Ma’s stories are ones I want to revisit again and again.
Tess Gunty
RavePop Matters... a tour de force ... Gunty intimately understands that settings can be characters in and of themselves, and in this, the novel excels; The Rabbit Hutch is as full of character as the cast ... It’s fitting that the story revolves around an apartment building because much of this novel’s reading experience is like glimpsing into the lives of others through window panes. Gunty moves deftly and expertly between alternating perspectives, never lingering too long on any character. This makes for a suspenseful reading experience ... One of The Rabbit Hutch‘s greatest strengths is how unapologetically strange it is. Gunty leans into the peculiar not just with her cast of characters but also with the novel’s format. Not only is the story told from multiple perspectives, but it’s also told in varying tenses and mediums, from newspaper clippings to interview transcripts to stark black-and-white drawings. Gunty masters each mode of communication with deft precision and an acute sense of observation. The only time the prose falters is when Gunty’s high-calibre writing pushes the suspension of disbelief perilously close to its limits — it’s difficult to imagine any 18-year-old coming close to the lyricism Blandine waxes in the novel ... should be bleak, considering this subject matter, but the story is buoyed by the messiness and complexity of the human experience in all its absurdity. At its core, Gunty’s story is about trying to live in a declining landscape rife with alienation, about wanting to transcend the mundane and find meaning in a life that has taken more than it has given.
