Saturday, January 13, 2024

The Slob By Aron Beauregard



The Slob
By Aron Beauregard
2019 Maggot Press
Paperback, 128 pages

 


                This book gets a lot of mentions on the Horror Books and Splatterpunks Facebook pages and naturally, that caught my attention. I like to indulge in the extreme stuff and this one was supposed to be way out there. Imagine my delight when I was walking through a local Horror Con and unbeknownst to me, Aron Beauregard was there! I bought a few books from him (and Daniel Volpe), ready to bust my AB cherry. He seemed like such a nice young man.

 

                Having grown up in a squalid setting, Vera became a neat freak, always cleaning to overcome the filth of her childhood. Life hadn’t been easy, but she eventually persevered, married her (disabled) husband and was pregnant with their first child. For extra cash, she became a door-to-door vacuum salesperson and business was booming. In her second trimester, she knew she’d have to give up the job. But just one more day… one more sale…

 

                Then, she rang The Slob’s doorbell. And her life went to hell.

 

                Beauregard is a hell of a good writer, and this book is much more than an extreme horror gross-out. Vera is a fully developed character, flawed (as we all are) and very relatable and I really became attached to her. That is why, halfway through the book, I got the biggest sucker punch in the gut since I read Let’s Go Play at the Adams’. From the point she gets to The Slob’s house till the end of the book, it is pure nightmare.

 

                The Slob is full of horrific violence, various bodily fluids, rape, dismemberment, humiliation, and every sordid action you can (and could never) imagine. Then why do I heartily recommend it? Because it is compelling, very well written and, well yeah… gross as fuck. Not many books make me wake up in the night feeling nervous and lousy, thinking of the protagonist. This one did.

 

                This edition has a lovely cover and interior art by Anton Rosovsky.

 

                And he seemed like a nice young man.

Midnight Magazine

               

No comments:

Post a Comment