Adams wants to disquiet you, not scare you. He is very good at it.
CC Adams has built a career on the people most horror walks past, and Where the Roaches Are puts them in a hospital and turns the lights up. This is a horror short story collection about the things medicine cannot fix and the lives we avoid looking at directly. Racism, trauma, stereotyping and psychosis all sit in the wards here, handled with care but never softened. Adams is not chasing terror. He is chasing discomfort, and he gets it through voice, through character, and through images that stay lodged in you long after the plot has gone: hallucinatory sequences, the titular guest of The Visitor’s Banquet, a closing blow that arrives with no warning at all.
Where the Roaches Are | CC Adams | Review by Ben Unsworth
Adams wants to disquiet you, not scare you, and Where the Roaches Are drags you into hospital politics and almost every kind of ism that can mistreat a person. Comeuppance is never the karmic force you want it to be. At his best, he goes at your brain as if reaching for a sledgehammer instead of a lobotomist’s needle.
Where the Roaches Are by CC Adams Review
Firstly, I’m infinitely envious of this collection’s title. It’s a spectacularly creepy one! Why didn’t think of it?
The premise of CC Adams’ latest collection is deceptively simple. Or at least, it may weave a twisted and perverse tapestry, but the overall impression is as crystal clear as the goosebumps at the thought of a cockroach crawling on your skin: in a hospital, a sordid picture is beginning to reveal itself, focused on not just those thing medicine is unable to heal, but what happens in the worlds and lives we overlook or avoid.
There are certain things you come to expect from CC Adams – such as stress-inducing characters, the people you shun or ignore, or (to quote a CC Adams story title from ‘Misery and Other Lines’) things on the periphery – and he delivers on them with his usual icy clarity here.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say anything is outright terrifying, nor are the concept even revolutionary, but Adams’ finger is deliberately on a different pulse here and it’s likely one of his best works just because of how powerful the voices at play are. He wants to disquiet you, not scare you, and he wants to draw you into a nasty world of hospital politics and almost every kind of -ism which can prove unfair or mistreat you.
A great boon is its echoes of a lot of 70s British horror from the likes of Nigel Kneale, or in modern terms Mark Morris and Stephen Laws; even in spots it has the cruel simplicity of Roald Dahl (so famously adapted for TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED). The main way this manifests is by showing the past worming its way into the present, but even then it’s just background angst for the kind of nihilism and cynicism so refined by 70s-influenced authors.
This is all a preamble then to tell that what’s most difficult to talk about here are the individual stories themselves, as the vibe and generally pleasurable displeasure is shared by all the tales here. It’s a beast of many moving parts and as you’re reading it constantly reincarnates itself, never staying still or fully definable. What you can talk about though is individual scenes or characters, or often simple images made really disquieting: hallucinatory sequences, the titular visitor of ‘The Visitor’s Banquet’, and an ultimate ending which slams into you like those logs in FINAL DESTINATION 2, for instance.
Much of the character work here is wonderful, with nurse Jocelyn of (most notably) the first story – I’ll Hang In There – an initial bastion of empathy. As part of the character work you also have to compliment the social world it fits into, again triggered by the first story but reincarnated throughout. Racism, trauma, stereotyping, and notably psychosis are all dealt carefully, but the message underpinning it is far from fragile. This is a world as blunt as it is refined, and it keeps its finger on a pulse that crops up at the most volatile moments. You’re not expected to like it, and that’s exactly the point – because you’re not always expected to like life.
As for the roster of characters we *don’t* like… well, the list grows exponentially as the stories grow on, and comeuppance isn’t the karmic force you necessarily want it to be. The non-chronological order of the stories – although it’s imperative they’re read in the order Adams sets out – might baffle you at first, but the impact it has on how we perceive these characters is really quite crucial.
I say again, CC Adams’ world is a deeply unfair one. And at his best, as with ‘Where the Roaches Are’, he goes at your brain as if accidentally using a sledgehammer instead of a lobotomist’s needle.
Where the Roaches Are by CC Adams
A healthy diet. Exercise. Sleep. Things to arm yourself with to promote good health and longevity.
But no one goes through life unscathed when accidents, sickness and disease can happen. Still, you have the chance to fight back with treatment, medicine and rest. And with these things on your side, the odds of winning are good. You may even make a full recovery.
Unless you go where the roaches are . . .
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