Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes

This review assumes you have read the book. Otherwise, my recommendation is do not read it.

This book is actual garbage. The writing is absolutely atrocious. LaRocca is an immature author who does not possess the ability to create a character of any substance. Every character lies on one side of a choice while another character is on the opposite side of that choice. There is no nuance at all. “Hey I want to do this” “I don't want to do this” “Okay grr” “Grr” That is the exact scenario LaRocca is limited to in his dialogue interaction. The lack of any driving force behind characters is in part due to the inability of LaRocca to write female characters. Every female character is subject to the stereotypes of hysteria and fickleness. So of course when they manically change their minds for no reason it makes them feel like a marionette for the author puppeteer to dance towards some strange end. His entire effort is spent on working towards some shock purely for the value of shock. There is no compelling story here, no interesting motivation the characters have, only a train chugging for 5 minutes to get to a poorly described destination of grotesquery.


And the destination of the title story is so vague as to be a frustrating nothingness. I literally cannot imagine what this woman is going to do with an apple peeler and a defecated tapeworm. Not because I don't have a capably gross mind, but because nothing makes sense. Is she going to peel the worm? Peel her skin somehow in a helical shape, only to see she's unable to reinsert the tapeworm? Is she going to bake an apple pie in her bathroom? I thought an apropos ending using Chekhov's apple peeler may be Agnes piercing her eyes because she does not deserve them (the repeated motif). But it's an extremely gratuitous stretch to reach that ending.

Ironically, the second ‘misfortune' is such a common and boring trope it is essentially the same level of nothingness. She is a ghost and someone walked through her and now she's trapped in this earthly purgatory. This is the least creative ending anyone could have done with ghosts. Sixth Sense, The Haunting of Bly Manor (The Turn of the Screw), SCOOBY DOO showcase this sort of ending. It is not allegorical, like The House that Jack Built. It's not an insight into a character's mind, like The Shining. It's just a childish trope.

There are many portions that make it impossible to suspend a sense of disbelief. No one posts their life story trying to sell an apple peeler on a LGBTQ forum. A tapeworm can live hooked in the intestinal wall for years. And a baby cannot kick after one month of fetal development. Seriously, some basic cursory research (google searches really) would have gone a long way.