The Autumnal
Sep. 16th, 2023 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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bookheaven
The Autumnal by Daniel KrausMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This, I think, wanted to be edgy folk horror but it didn't exactly tread new ground. Now, there's nothing wrong with sticking to the classics but you need to make them pop if you do. This really didn't. Kat and her daughter Sybil are barely hanging on in Chicago. Kat has been in a string of bad relationships, sporting a shiner from her latest and did the sex, drugs and rock and roll thing, trying to make aliving as a musician. Sybil loves fantasy books and has explosive anger issues.
Kat gets notified her mother, Trudy, died and left Kat her home back in Comfort Notch NH and since she has no real place to stay she heads back to rural New England to a place her mother sent her away from years ago, something Kat has hated her for and never spoken to her since over. Our first hint something isn't right is right there in Trudy's casket.
This is where we get the folk horror stock standards, very White town, everyone Stepford Wives nice and hints there is something dark underpinning how 'nice' the town is. Kat can't just leave it alone as starts picking at it, with the help of a drug addicted burn victim from a tragedy the year Kat was sent off.
As ratherly overlong this felt, I still didn't feel we got to know the characters well, or maybe it's just that Sybil and Kat are flat and not particularly likeable. Even weirder is the tattoo removal dude who then puts their mistakes on HIS skin for emotional reasons that barely make sense (and weirded me out.) In spite of barely having a relationship beyond, hey remove my tattoo we get some sex scenes to illustrate...I have no idea. Kat makes bad choices? Sex magic? I really thought it was going there and it sort of tried to but it became nothing. Strange.
The ending was also a little convoluted and weird and predictable all at the same time. I wanted more from this but it was not to be. It wasn't awful, mind you, but it wasn't very memorable either. The art was nice though.
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