3 sapphic horror books for if you're afraid of your own desire

scary lesbians and lesbians being scared; reviewing To Be Devoured, Paradise Rot, and Our Wives Under the Sea.

I have more queer horror to share with y’all… specifically ones with WLW relationships being the center focus. Here we have a woman who wants to eat with the vultures, an international student in an unsavory living situation, and a marine biologist who comes home to her wife changed after being stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

The Books!

1. To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger

2. Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

3. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

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To Be Devoured (2019) by Sara Tantlinger

(psychological / body horror / splatterpunk novella)

Andi is a woman with a long-term girlfriend and a haunted, depressed past. Her girlfriend Luna is the main person in her life, and she's obsessed with her. She was making progress with her mental health until her old therapist died, and now she's begun obsessing over vultures too. Specifically, being one of them and dining on raw, decaying meat.

You can tell that something is wrong from the beginning. Andi is an unreliable and inconsistent narrator. She has intense emotional reactions, but she doesn't communicate well. Her inner world is hidden from her outer world, and the horror of it quickly being revealed to the outer world is the main focus of the book.

I thought this was bat-shit crazy, and highly symbolic. An enjoyable journey but also an enjoyable piece to analyze for its metaphors on love, nature, and hunger. It felt unhinged from the get-go and it really wraps you in. None of the characters were likable, but Andi's train of thought was absolutely compelling.

This immerses you into the perspective of someone who is out of touch with reality, and eager to commit violence and eat unsanitary things. There is violence against animals in this piece, and the scenes of Andi eating meat are detailed and brutal. In that sense, the gore reminded me of Nic Brewer's Suture. The attention to sensory description being... effectively gag-inducing. The sounds and the sliminess... her writing provokes a strong reaction, and it’s excellently done.

I deeply enjoyed this, and I related to the anger that Andi felt at people's disdain for her ugly emotions and darker nature. It caused her to suppress and obsess over it until it exploded into something nobody expected. Feminine rage and loss of control is so enticing to read about... It's feeling what it's like to snap without actually snapping yourself.

This book was amazing. Gnarly, sick and twisted, and super effective for being a shorter novella. I will have to check out more from Tantlinger.

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Paradise Rot (2009) by Jenny Hval

Translated from Norwegian by Marjam Idriss

(magical realism / body horror / thriller)

Rotten fruit and sin! Twenty-year old Jo is in a new country for university. She feels alien in this new environment, and she has a hard time fitting in and finding housing. Eventually she does find a female roommate willing to share her strange apartment with her, but the house and her roommate get weirder the longer Jo stays.

Jo starts off the story anxious, socially isolated, and demure. Her being a young woman in a new place, she senses that people can tell how inexperienced she is. The scenes outside of the house often focus on sexual harassment and the feeling of otherness, adding to the sense that she is safer within the weird apartment rather than outside it.

This story uses a creeping and growing sense of disgust and confusion rather than violent horror. At first it is exciting - Jo is having a sexual awakening - but clearly something is very wrong. There's a growing sense of dread as Jo's roommate gets closer to her, pushing the boundaries that she too is curious about.

It feels like the apartment is a pressure cooker built to force Jo out of her comfort zone. The house seems to have a life of its own and she feels that she's dreaming all the time, feeling the thrum of warm life around her. Plants and fungi start growing within the space, and her roommate being a slob doesn't help. Things pure and lovely are turned sour and rotting the more enmeshed they become.

Surreal is the main word I'd use to describe this book. Even before we get to the apartment, I get the sense that Hval is describing reality, but not quite. The conflicts are unsubtle in a way that makes them feel exaggerated, but also calls attention to the core of the issue.

Young lady forms a codependent relationship to retreat from what feels like an unwelcoming environment... a common enough experience, just probably not with all the mold.

This was more creepy than scary. It uses a lot of lyrical description, and I didn't get a lot of the metaphors. But I did enjoy the contrast between the apartment and the Garden of Eden, and the immersion into Jo's nervous, curious perspective. Solid novel about facing discomfort and sexual exploration.

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Our Wives Under the Sea (2022) by Julia Armfield

(cosmic horror / body horror / literary fiction)

This started strong for me and I ended up hating it, bitterly. What seems intended to be a sympathetic and relatable main character ended up being so unlikable that she ruined the story for me.