Published in 2021
140 pages
Maggie Siebert is a writer based in Brooklyn. She co-edits HARSH. Bonding is her first book.
What is this book about?
This is a truly vibrant and unexpectedly poignant collection of horror short stories. Siebert writes with what I can only describe as a “nihilistic urgency”: Relentlessly charting out tragic and monstrous demises. However, rather than leaning into a dull pessimism, the micro-universes she creates here feel complete and flushed with affect.
There were some misses in terms of immersion and connection, but overall, Siebert’s talent is evident, and the fearsome power of destruction is fully felt in stories like “Ammon” (which gave me airs of the horror movie, Thelma), “Coping” (ExistenZ meets Jelinek), “Witches” (Ketchum’s “Gone” came to mind, but it becomes its own shade of subtle dread), and “Every Day for the Rest of Your Life” (astoundingly sorrowful, ugly, and my favorite of the collection).
This is a solid collection all around, and I use “solidity” somewhat cheekily, given the collection’s title. At hand we have a thorough exploration of what “bonding” does in terms of horror—a tethering of emotion through pummeling and aberration. While “bonding” is often taken as a loving and fruitful meeting of human kin, here, connection spirals into dreadful heights that make this one of the most honest explorations of how horror can lurk even in a tight and warm embrace.
–from a review on goodreads by Plagued by Visions–
