Alice Isn't Dead

this book is really weird in a creepy, abstract horror way. it follows a woman named keisha whose wife, alice, goes missing and is presumed to be dead. keisha starts seeing alice on the news in the background and becomes a trucker, travelling across the united states in search of alice. on the road she encounters creatures that don’t seem entirely human, which then unfolds into a bigger conspiracy.

the book started off strong and immediately captured my attention with its atmospheric and distinct writing style. but as the story went on, it started to lose me. i wasn’t expecting it to be realistic and grounded, but i couldn’t suspend my disbelief every time keisha managed to pull off every single foolish decision she made without suffering consequences. the main antagonists are supposed to be these extremely powerful, supernatural creatures but somehow keisha manages to survive every encounter with them and even kill them with her bare hands, because she uses her anxiety as her superpower???

that’s not the only issue i have with the plot; i’m also not sold on the origins of the thistle men. i think making them human beings who were transformed into monsters by their own hatred is an oversimplification of how systems of oppression actually work. we learn in the later half of the book that one of the thistle men used to be a normal human man named hank thompson, who was a violent white supremacist and a ku klux klan member. nobody turned him into a monster; he just gradually transformed into one over decades, his hatred for anyone not like him implied to be the cause.

yes, violent and hateful bigots exist. but a lot of racists can also be “nice” people, who don’t see themselves as violent or bad people but just do not believe people of colour are entitled to the same rights as them. to reduce oppressors to just the violent kind, i feel, handwaves away all the other kinds of racists who do not fit that description but are still as equally complicit in the oppression of marginalised people.

the ending was also unsatisfying for me. while i enjoyed the writing style, i found everything else kinda disappointing. i don’t think i’d read it again.