Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless is a dark, unflinching haunted house story that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors through the lens of the modern-day trans experience. “A triumph of transgressive queer horror.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review “Easily one of the strongest horror debuts in recent memory.” —Booklist, STARRED review Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice’s life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go. Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own. Cutting, disruptive, and darkly funny, Tell Me I’m Worthless is a vital work of trans fiction that examines the devastating effects of trauma and how fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other. “Ambitious, brutal, and brilliant.” —Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Tell me I'm Worthless by Allison Rumfitt is a dark haunted house story about a country plagued by transphobia and fear. Through a combination of allusion to horror classics, realistic narrative, and relentless prose Rumfitt weaves the story of Alice and Ila and a house haunted by hate. It's very dark and sometimes lacks subtly, but perhaps Rumfitt's point is that this is also reality.

Wow this was a lot to go through. The audio performance was perfect, but also, so uniquely upsetting and powerful and well done. But most important to note, it is a very distressing read/listen.

Listen. Smarter people than me have written really excellent, high-brow reviews of this. I'm not even going to try. TMIW is showing up on a lot of recommended horror lists and I just want to get my feelings down in this review while they are fresh. I went into this cold, knowing nothing, and I think it might be a little dangerous to do that with this title.
This book is filled with hate. Real, horrifying hate. The words come at the reader like razor-sharp knives. The fascists of England hate, the characters seem to hate themselves and each other, and the house, Albion, hates, hates, hates.
Even though the words were not aimed at me directly I winced with the hit of all of them.

That said, I really respected TMIW. It's unlike anything I have ever read before, and I was very, very interested. There are some chilling moments that I will probably never shake from my brain and the parts with Albion are literally terrifying. I listened to this on audio and the narrator had me curled into a fetal position listening to certain parts. And I am not someone who is easy to scare. I think it's because Rumfitt explores something I'm comfortable with but shows us what it looks like when twisted through hateful eyes. In short, I'm scared that real people think like this. I'm aware that it's true, I just never had to “live” in it.

Does it belong on horror lists? Maybe. I think that may be a disservice. I happen to be a big fan of literary horror, but it may have a hard time finding the right readers. It's very much literary horror, and it is way too understated to say it is a “haunted house” story. There are many layers here.