Ten years ago, an extreme horror author did something you don’t see every day. He published a book. Then he pulled it. A week. That’s how long David L. Tamarin’s This Book Hates You stayed in circulation before the author withdrew the original edition, citing editorial and formatting issues that demanded a second pass.
The official explanation was practical. The unofficial version, floated by those who prefer their origin stories with a little more teeth, involves alien abduction, a kidnapped family, and a manuscript written under duress. Either way, the book vanished. And for a decade, it sat in the dark, waiting to be unleashed again.
It’s back now. This Book Hates You 2.0 is a re-edited, reformatted second edition of Tamarin’s splatterpunk anthology, collecting twenty years’ worth of extreme horror short stories that were never meant to be comfortable. The author, a writer, actor, attorney, and producer who has contributed to Rue Morgue and Serial Killer magazine, describes his work as “extreme and brutal hardcore horror with a jet black sense of humor”.
That’s one way to put it. Another way: this is a transgressive fiction collection that promises side effects like urinating diarrhoea, spontaneous orgasm, and a bluish tint in the genital region before the reader has even finished the preface. The book hates you. It says so on the tin.
The question, as This Book Hates You 2.0 crawls back into the light a full decade after its original, aborted publication, is whether extreme horror ages well. Splatterpunk, the sub-genre Tamarin operates in, has seen a resurgence in recent years, with authors like Eric LaRocca being named by Esquire as one of the writers at the forefront of a “next golden age of horror fiction”
This Book Hates You 2.0 by David L. Tamarin Review: Extreme Horror Returns
A collection of transgressive fiction that is designed to challenge and faithfully delivers.
Tamarin made the decision to pull the original book only a week or so after publication to re-edit and re-format, unleashing version 2.0 a timely 10 years later. I prefer the alternative proposition; that he was simply obeying the instructions from aliens that had abducted his family and wouldn’t release them unless he wrote this book.
What results is a transgressive, brutal, weird, bizarre and extreme collection of 20 years’ worth of stories. A collection that is designed to challenge and faithfully delivers. Some of the contemporary references at the time of original release could be lost on some, but I urge you to read beyond the periphery and immerse in a collection that will amuse, disgust, horrify and test your boundaries.
The opening chapter ‘This Book Hates You’ is the story of the book itself – a declaration of war against humanity, an assault by the book on the reader’s senses with cautionary side effects on reading. The side effects are hilarious in their bizarro glory; urinating diarrhoea or spontaneous orgasm are risks I’m willing to take as I fully engaged my absurdist state.
The imagery is immersive throughout this collection, with ‘Jesus Wept’ particularly standing out as he picks the scabs off his stigmata, where eternal suffering is the consequence of his martyrdom.
Mental illness and family trauma is a recurring feature, but each story portrays starkly different perspectives. ‘What Happens in the Attic’ is a deeply disturbing account of gratuitous sexual violence used as a weapon of war; the impact of PTSD and generational abuse played out by a very disturbing use of toy soldiers. The tension in the story is ramped to the extreme by a cleverly constructed use of run on sentences, crammed with imagery and emotions that forces you to experience every element of pain.
In ‘The Jackson Family Good Times’, the family’s tastes have existed for generations, with their ancestors enjoying some choice company; a visceral and necessarily shocking read, while in ‘The Abortion People’ every unexpected revelation creates a haunting depiction of a slow descent into mental illness, where learned behaviours are normalised with a denouement that will haunt you.
At the extreme end of extreme, Tamarin pushes every boundary in ‘Hurting My Toys’ – after all, everything is a toy when you are a serial killer and your motives are simple.
Exploitation another theme: big pharma greed is horrifically laid bare in ‘A Fistful of Tumors’, where experimental medicines are used by an already psychopathic and volatile man, his reaction arguably the desired result. The references contemporary to the time of its original conception might be lost on some, but they are cleverly done, providing a welcome dark humour to a disturbing characterisation. While in ‘Robo-Porn Revenge’ we enter an existence where there are no governments and no censorship but the exploitation of sex workers in the porn industry continues. This is a visceral explosion of carnage and revenge, but just remember, Team Work Makes the dream Work.
The bizarro, fever dream stories offer a welcome reset from the extreme. In ‘Little Jimmy Wanted a Baseball’ we swarm alongside Jimmy through a kaleidoscope of hallucinatory images (watch out for the pet, Freak); ‘Head Blown Out’ – one of my favourites – is a claustrophobic narrative with a pounding, escalating panic.
This Book Hates You 2.0 is not a book to be read. It’s a contract signed in bad faith. David L. Tamarin’s transgressive fiction collection promises to assault your senses, and it faithfully delivers.
‘Attack of the Pudding People’ is a brutal bizarro. Do you think you would recognise a Pudding Person? Do you know how to safeguard yourself from their quivering spongy masses? It’s pointless looking to the Spoon People or the Fork People – they are absolutely no help. Just one man, his whistle, and a heavy machine gun can play a small part in their destruction.
Four shorts explore the responses you would get ‘If They Could Write Back’. Satan gives a welcome reality check of who really crowds out hell; Santa Claus confirms he is a creep with his own special wish-list; God vents at the demands placed on him by the egotistical; and Charles Manson responds to a marriage proposal with some life advice.
Expect to be heartbroken by ‘Pig’, ‘Abducted and Probed: A Love Story’ and ‘All American Family Fun’’. Be morally challenged by tales from the apocalypse: ‘Nightmare of Aliens and Death’, an uncomfortable premonition of the future and ‘Melting’ which poses a crucial question – if you had the opportunity to save a world that isn’t worth it, would you?
Get your medical horror fix with ‘Operations Gone Bad’ through the eyes of a doctor with martyr syndrome, and a doctor desperate for recognition in ‘Gravity’ then feel guilty for laughing while you shudder at ‘Octo-Mom and the Projectile Birth Contest’ and, another favourite, ‘We Can All be Art’ that proves that when the writing muse calls, you must act and its not the artist’s fault if the editorial guidelines are unclear.
With flash fiction, obituaries and other delights, ‘Snuff Movie Review’ deserves particular mention for this elegant review of the Citizen Kane of snuff movies, where the reviewer presents a dispassionate analysis of the horrors of the scenes depicted in the film; the irony not lost on this reviewer. A potential recruit to the Ginger Nuts of Horror team perhaps?
This Book Hates You 2.0 by David L. Tamarin
Back in print after 10 years, this short story collection will blow your mind. The book has been re-edited and re-formatted with a new cover and 2 new introductions. This book is harsh and brutal, and contains adult material not suitable for children, pregnant women, and people with heart conditions. 30 stories of splatterpunk, extreme horror, crime and bizarro.
Contains Hurting My Toys, the short story that became a novel; the infamous Snuff Movie Review which the author had to pull off social media because people thought it was real; the grotesquely erotic alien abduction story Abducted and Probed; What Did You Do To The Children? and many more tales of transgression, perversion, evil, deviant sex, and unforgettable extreme violence.
