Order MILK-BLOOD here
''This isn't how it's supposed to be,'' she said.
''This is how it is,'' he answered.
I was never completely sure whether my mom was just a concerned parent or the unwitting Chuck Norris of parenting. Her no violent entertainment policy * made it my own personal forbidden fruit, instead of booze and drugs, like for any normal child. In school, I seek creepy stories and the most extreme horror movies in order to challenge my own sheltered understanding of existence, instead of cheap highs. The eBook era is a gold mine for thrill seekers like me, as material that would be otherwise too extreme to be published finds its way there. MILK-BLOOD, by Mark Matthews is one of these disturbing tales that could only belong in the golden era of indie publishing.
MILK-BLOOD (what a creepy title), is the story of Lily's birth, up to her tenth anniversary. She was born out of a tormented union, and her mother passed in mysterious circumstances not long after. Lily suffers from her cyanotic heart disease, which gives her skin this strange see-through blue colour. She lives alone with her alcoholic father and her demented grandmother, who seems to be sinking deeper into the bed of despair her father Zach created for them all these years ago. But when Lily meets the stranger living across the street, things start changing in her life. In fact, things start changing in his life, too. There is a buried secret digging its way out of oblivion, and it wants its rightful place back in Lily's life.
In order to appreciate MILK-BLOOD, you need to know right off the bat that you're in for some heavy social stuff. It's a metafictional novel written from the perspective of a Detroit social worker (which is Mark Matthews' real life occupation) and part of its genius is to sneak horror in what otherwise would be a bleak social drama. Don't get me wrong, MILK-BLOOD is 100% horror, but it's narrative slowly unfolds, like an urban legend. You know these campfire tales that always happened to someone the storyteller knows? Mark Matthews uses metafiction in order to give the legitimacy and intimacy to his novel, and by the time the horror elements kick in, you're invested in the narrative like it was happening to your neighbor across the street, so that it terrifies the shit out of you.
One area where MILK-BLOOD (the more I write it, the creepier I find that title is) lost points with me was that it switched to first person point of view whenever chapters were narrated by Lily. It's a huge pet peeve of mine for two reasons: First, children are great vectors of horror **. They can be the creepiest thing to the outside eye, and switching to first person nullified that potential. Also, it's almost impossible to accurately narrate from a child's perspective. Children don't think like adults. They're not self-conscious or soulful, and their thought patterns are simple and straightforward. and it's not Lily's case in MILK-BLOOD (*shudders*). She talks and thinks like an adult and whenever the outside events didn't warrant a horrified description (namely the last couple chapters), it rubbed me the wrong way.
MILK-BLOOD is a short and clever horror novel about drugs, and the throes of addiction. It's not trying to scare the reader on every page, but instead Mark Matthews meticulously planned his scares in order to make them as narratively powerful as possible. Don't let the off-putting title and the cover that looks like an old horror VHS turn you away from an otherwise engaging novel. These old VHS often concealed the best, most traumatizing horror movies and MILK-BLOOD honours a long-standing tradition in that regards. You're going to want to skip on going to Detroit for a couple months after reading it, and we all know that the quality of an horror novel is calculated in the amount of irrational things it makes the reader do.
MILK-BLOOD is a short and clever horror novel about drugs, and the throes of addiction. It's not trying to scare the reader on every page, but instead Mark Matthews meticulously planned his scares in order to make them as narratively powerful as possible. Don't let the off-putting title and the cover that looks like an old horror VHS turn you away from an otherwise engaging novel. These old VHS often concealed the best, most traumatizing horror movies and MILK-BLOOD honours a long-standing tradition in that regards. You're going to want to skip on going to Detroit for a couple months after reading it, and we all know that the quality of an horror novel is calculated in the amount of irrational things it makes the reader do.
* She was afraid it would turn me into Jeffrey Dahmer. Today, I merely find him interesting ;)
** Josie and I babysat our nephew a couple weeks ago. An hour after we put him to bed,, we found him ogling through the bedroom door crack, dead-eyed and confused, holding his blanket. He looked like Danny in THE SHINING. We both went ''BA-GACK!'' and then he started crying. We're not good at this yet.