Morsel
The first page of Carter Keane’s Morsel provides some content warnings, but what I could have used was some advice: Remember to breathe. The tension was so effective that several times, I became the cliché and had to release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
Lou is on the verge of losing her office job; told from her first-person perspective, all the details aren’t clear, but it seems to be mostly due to flaking out and missing work due to her mom’s severe illness.
So when Ellis, the CEO, gives her what is probably her last chance to keep her job which both she and her mom worked hard to put her through college to earn, she leaps at it. Even though it involves going to a burned-down house in the middle of nowhere in the southern Ohio Appalachian woods for a property assessment.
Soon after she and her dog Ripley arrive at the property, eerie events are set into motion and Lou finds herself confronting literal and psychological monsters.
In Morsel, Carter Keane packs a lot in 200 pages. It’s a chilling and downright horrifying folk horror (with some body horror thrown in for good measure). It shines a light on generational poverty and the systemic challenges the working class faces to break that cycle. It’s also a terribly sad look at grief and the feeling of never being enough. From Lou’s first person perspective, it’s also a bit of a fever dream at times which just adds to unsettling feeling. And, did I mention, the folk horror elements are chilling and downright horrifying?
Randomlings
In their content warning, Carter Keane promises the dog is okay, but speaking as someone who fast-forwards film and skims/skips pages as necessary to avoid descriptions of dogs in peril, it was not an easy ride from A to Ripley’s okay. I did love how important Ripley was to Lou and was a member of the family who was not to be left behind when stuff got real. As it should be.
It didn’t really fit the flow of my main review, but the office life horror really deserves a shout-out, too. The pressure of having to eat lunch and socialize with your co-workers (let alone taking $1000 weekend long MLM pitches disguised as wellness retreats) on top of being perfect at your job is the stuff of nightmares. Not my day job, of course, but I can imagine. If any of my workmates are reading this.
Based on the summary on the author’s website, I use “she” when referring to Lou although she refers to herself as transgender (“other people just say agender,” she says, but says that’s not completely accurate.)
Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the advance copy for my honest review.
