Synopsis:
Suzy and her brother, Lim, live with their abusive mother in a town where the stars don’t shine at night. Once the abuse becomes too much to handle, the two siblings embark on a sordid cross-country murder spree beginning with their mom. As the murder tally rises, Suzy’s mental state spirals into irredeemable madness.
Edition:
Kindle e-book (purchased)
My Thoughts:
Before I begin, I want to do a brief Content Warning. This book covers some horrific ground. It contains sexual abuse / rape / incest, child abuse, suicidal ideation, violent murder, animal abuse, and physical abuse. But if you’re willing to bear with me, I will explain how it’s handled in order to keep it from being overwhelmingly awful, and how it is that I came to rate something that covers such awful subject matters so highly.
This is a very powerfully written novella. It focuses predominantly on Suzy, who as I implied above came from a terrible place. Her parents were monsters, and they in turn, created monsters. Nobody has a happy ending here. These aren’t heroes, they aren’t anti-heroes. They’re just a collection of terminally damaged people. And yet, at no point does it feel like Kolesnik is positing that abuse always begets abuse, psychotic behavior, or anything of the type. She has simply created what feels like a case study – what the consequences of rampant abuse could be.
Very little space is devoted to the horrific abuses that Suzy and her Lim endured, but what is there is deeply affecting. I think it is in Kolesnik’s restraint where this book really shines. She manages to tell so much story without it feeling exploitative. She tells what she needs to tell in order to give the reader a deep understanding of why these two became the people they became, but nothing more (although for the record, it’s still a lot of really, really awful stuff). It is honestly a little like watching Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – like, you don’t feel great about what you’re seeing, but you feel like you owe it to the character to see it through to the end. It may not feel super fun, but it does feel important.
“I tempted fate. I tempted murder. There was a rage so deep inside of me that wanted a man to dare try to kill me. There was a hate so deep inside of me that wanted me to dare [sic] just die.”
Suzy is a VERY messed up young woman. Seeing how she was raised, and the horrific abuses she has endured doesn’t excuse her behavior one bit, but it does provide some (not insignificant) examples of the power of ‘nurture’ in the Nature v. Nurture argument of what creates a killer.
I particularly liked that Suzy struggled to recapture her humanity time and again, because it made it feel so much more tragic each time she failed – each time she gave into the darkness and became the monster she secretly feared she was deep down.
“…even though it feels like God to kill another human being, you are the opposite of God. Every foul word you speak about another person, every item you soil, every person you harm. That is not the work of a God, but of a maggot.
And this world has lots of maggots. They multiply and feed on the vulnerable as though it were their natural right. Your brother is a maggot. And you, hell. You might be one, too. Who am I to say?”
This is a story that is dark, violent, and completely unflinching in its portrayal of a deeply disturbed family, and the deeply disturbed individuals they find connection with, but it is also the story of the good people who try to help those individuals claw their way back from the darkness even if they are ultimately unsuccessful.
Suzy’s descent from victim to perpetrator is truly shocking, but it is not at all unbelievable. She is the survivor of a truly unfathomable childhood who comes out the other end in the only way that felt viable to her. She’s not the same as the people she came up with though – she has created her own kind of monster. This story is incredibly bleak, and I really dig it.
About the Author (from her website):
Samantha Kolesnik is an award-winning writer and director from Pennsylvania.
Her debut novel, TRUE CRIME, is available now from Grindhouse Press. Her screenplays have been recognized at top genre film festivals and her fiction has appeared in notable literary magazines including The Bitter Oleander, The William and Mary Review, and Barnstorm.
Samantha’s film, Mama’s Boy, world premiered at the Telluride Horror Show and has been a hit on the festival circuit, playing well-regarded events such as Boston Underground Film Festival, Ithaca Fantastik, Horrible Imaginings Film Festival, Nightmares Film Festival and more. Waylon Jordan from iHorror.com praised the short as “transgressive” and a “lesson in psychological horror”.
A community builder and supporter of other independent artists, Samantha is also one of the co-founders of the Women in Horror Film Festival and has served as a panelist, guest juror and volunteer at several independent genre events.
Rating:
The story is good, it’s powerful, and it is short enough that you’ll probably never feel like you’re drowning in the terrible (I didn’t, anyway). I feel like I’m going to be thinking about it for a good long time.
True Crime By Samantha Kolesnik Grindhouse Press Horror, Thriller, Crime Fiction ISBN: 9781941918562 Published: January 15, 2020 E-book, Paperback 109 Pages Author's website Publisher's website
Awesome review!! I agree, this one is really horrific and difficult, but amazingly written!