'Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.
'When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.'
Horror is a genre that can do a lot; sometimes it's fairly straight forward to understand, such as a monster or killer stalking a victim, but there are some horror stories that have you wondering what you've just experienced. These stories are the one that worm their way under your skin and stick with you for a long time after. A lot of the time these stories tend to come later in a writers career, when they've found their voice and are playing with something a little bit more experimental. Neena Viel, however, arrives on the scene with her debut novel, Listen to Your Sister, in a hugely impressive way with a horror story that will have you adding Viel to your list of authors to follow closely.
Listen to Your Sister tells the story of Calla Williams (the titular sister) and her two younger brothers, Jamie, and Dre. Calla is twenty five, and finds herself not only having to be a big sister, but having to be the guardian for her youngest sibling. Calla is juggling this responsibility with a job she dislikes, a new relationship, and the other pressures that come with being a young adult. It's a difficult time in her life, made even tougher by the fact that Jamie is something of a rebel, regularly in trouble with his school, using is teenage energy band bravado in ways that bring him into conflict with authority. With Dre, the middle of the three siblings, being unwilling to help, Calla finds herself close to the end of her rope, struggling with this extreme situation.
To make matters worse, Calla's worries and fears over her brothers safety in a world that's increasingly hostile to young Black people, she's begun to have terrible nightmares about Jamie and Dre dying in frightening ways. In her dreams Calla is unable to save them, and it's further fraying her mental health. Calla's fears and nightmares begin to bleed into her waking life when terrible things happen to her brothers, such as Dre being attacked by a girl in a prom dress, and Jamie being attacked by a racist cop at a protest. Knowing that they need to get away someplace safer, Calla books them into a remote AirBNB in the woods, leading them to an isolated cabin. Unfortunately, the horrors they sought to leave behind have followed them into the forest.
I don't want to talk about Listen to Your Sister much beyond the initial set-up, as it's both a book that's hard to describe, and one that's best experienced with as little knowledge as possible. What I will say, however, is that it's a hell of an experience. The book deals with trauma, family trauma, fractured relationships, loss of family members, systemic racism, abandonment, sibling guardianship, guilt, missed opportunities, things that can forever shape a life in a negative way; especially when bottled up and not talked about. Viel's book feels incredibly raw at times, dealing with issues that a lot of people may have experience with, but that people tend not to talk about. It's brutally honest at times, and its exploration of these themes through a horror lens is beautifully dark and disturbing.
It might sound like there's not a lot to Listen to Your Sister that's particularly positive or joyful, but as much as it deals with these negative issues and feelings there's also a lot of positivity to be found here too. Calla absolutely loves her brothers, and the familial bond the Williams family shares is the central focus of the book, with hope for a better tomorrow being a large part of the narrative. It also employs dark humour in great ways, a reminds you that even when things are bad there are things that you can latch onto for a little glimmer of humour, even if it might not always seem like the right time for it.
Listen to Your Sister is a very creepy story, one with some dark and twisted moments, a narrative that's full of atmosphere and dream-like moments at times. It's dealing with the darkly fantastical, yet is grounded in the very human, very real lives of our central characters. It might not always be an easy read, but it's one that feels very raw and honest at times, and will mean a lot to certain readers who might see some of their own lives reflected here.
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