Scan barcode
A review by screamdogreads
Hairs by Ira Rat
4.0
"I pull at the stitches, and they come out without any effort. Just the slow, uncomfortable feeling of floss being dragged across my gums. Tender and as deliberate as I can be until they're gone, and the skin falls loose again, now dropping past my bottom lip."
Lonely, bleak, and deeply upsetting. Ira Rat's Hairs is an anxiety riddled, atmospheric, crushing pit of despair and sadness. These extremely short stories deliver a total gut-punch, so miserable and sorrowful. The tales contained within Hairs are intensely mesmerizing and all too memorable, at first, these weird and wonderful little tales may feel disjointed, but each one is connected by desolation and depression. Each story abruptly ends, utterly unresolved, feeling much like being shoved off a cliff and plunging head first into the murky depths below. With Hairs, Ira Rat has put faith into the minds of the reader, it's on us, after all, to allow our twisted imaginations to run free. There's a brutal uniqueness to this grim little novella, and for a book so tiny, it has some serious teeth.
Hairs reads like almost no other book I've ever experienced. It's art. It's something that totally transcends the written word. Somehow, by saying so little, Ira Rat spins images that twist and gnarl into beastly forms that beg to break free from the pages. This isn't a horror novel, these aren't tales of terror, instead this is a novel of discomfort and abandonment. Perhaps, we may call these tales slices of life, except they're not. They're cutting, scathing, horrendous vignettes that make for a viscerally unpleasant experience. These stories are deeply unnerving, absolutely harrowing, upsetting to the core. It's almost impossible to fully describe what this book even is. It was so short, over so quickly and yet it felt like the end of everything - Hairs made me want to drink bleach.
Lonely, bleak, and deeply upsetting. Ira Rat's Hairs is an anxiety riddled, atmospheric, crushing pit of despair and sadness. These extremely short stories deliver a total gut-punch, so miserable and sorrowful. The tales contained within Hairs are intensely mesmerizing and all too memorable, at first, these weird and wonderful little tales may feel disjointed, but each one is connected by desolation and depression. Each story abruptly ends, utterly unresolved, feeling much like being shoved off a cliff and plunging head first into the murky depths below. With Hairs, Ira Rat has put faith into the minds of the reader, it's on us, after all, to allow our twisted imaginations to run free. There's a brutal uniqueness to this grim little novella, and for a book so tiny, it has some serious teeth.
Hairs reads like almost no other book I've ever experienced. It's art. It's something that totally transcends the written word. Somehow, by saying so little, Ira Rat spins images that twist and gnarl into beastly forms that beg to break free from the pages. This isn't a horror novel, these aren't tales of terror, instead this is a novel of discomfort and abandonment. Perhaps, we may call these tales slices of life, except they're not. They're cutting, scathing, horrendous vignettes that make for a viscerally unpleasant experience. These stories are deeply unnerving, absolutely harrowing, upsetting to the core. It's almost impossible to fully describe what this book even is. It was so short, over so quickly and yet it felt like the end of everything - Hairs made me want to drink bleach.
"Cancer causes cancer-causing cancers. You've got to avoid them at all costs. My first memory of my mother is her holding her fingers like a bunny quoting. I'm late! I'm late! The last is crying over a radiated husk."
Fiercely emotional, a total void of a novella, blistering and brutal. Each of the stories in Hairs felt like an apocalypse. It's too difficult to define the exact feeling left behind by Hairs, but it was something akin to hunkering down in a bomb shelter while the rest of humanity watches itself crumble. Some real bleak shit. There's something haunting and despairing about this entire collection, what strange little things they are, definitely not horror, yet they fit the bill, being scary, horrible, monstrous things. If minimalist horror is a thing, maybe that's what this is, stripped away, cut down, every single unnecessary word cast aside until all that's left is the most simplistic, distressing and somber of prose. Absolutely electrifying, an experience like no other.
"Again." Her mother demanded from within another spasm of coughs. A bottle of bleach was in her hand, and she slowly began adding it to the water. "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me-" Her mother plunged her face into the sink."