Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes

The three bloody stories of LaRocca’s debut collection, all “tethered by the human need to connect with someone, something else,” explore the nether sides of human relationships, digging into physical and emotional abuse and the lengths to which people will go to stay civil. The epistolary title story follows the online relationship between two women as it escalates into increasingly intense submission and domination, culminating in a horrifying event. In the Ari Aster–esque “The Enchantment,” a husband and wife grieving the loss of their son under grotesque circumstances become caretakers of a remote island, where they are visited by a strange man who promises either closure or utter damnation. A man discovers a mysterious bone with his initials etched into it in “You’ll Find It’s Like That All Over” and engages in an escalating series of wagers with his elderly neighbor, stretching his personal boundaries for the sake of affability. These gore-soaked excesses have difficulty reaching satisfying resolutions; the stories’ considerable guts never get a chance to function properly within the collection’s body politic before they are ripped out. Still, the author’s strong prose does an impressive job anchoring everything on solid ground even as the stories spiral into surrealist grotesquerie. LaRocca is a writer to watch. (Sept.)