2024/156: Where the Dead Wait — Ally Wilkes

2024/156: Where the Dead Wait — Ally Wilkes

When animals were slaughtered -- butchered correctly -- they’d have the blood drained. This was the stink of something still fat with blood. Being cooked hastily, for starving men. Something was in the room with them. [p. 127]

I'd found All the White Spaces compelling and well-written, so was keen to read Wilkes' second novel. Her prose is still resonant and evocative, but I didn't enjoy Where the Dead Wait as much: partly, I think, because I didn't find the protagonist (William 'Eat-Em-Fresh' Day) as sympathetic as Jonathan in the previous book, and partly because I found the cannibalism thoroughly unpleasant.( Read more... )