My taste in books has always been quite crazy, ranging from lusty romance novels that make your heart race and face redden to horrifying stories that make your skin crawl and stomach turn. However, saying that my taste ranges between horror and romance can be confusing because there really is no range- for me, reading is one or the other, no in-between. There will never be a time when you see me reading something outside of those genres. The books I describe here are all from the splatterpunk genre, which contains books characterized by explicit descriptions of horrific, violent, or pornographic scenes. In this article, I will introduce you all to a few of my favorites in hopes that I can get some of you to read them!
The first book is one that is special to me because it was the first splatterpunk book I ever read; it is The Slob by Aron Beauregard. While this book may be one that I consider one of my favorites, calling it disturbing is an understatement. This is truly one of the most vile things I have ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes upon. This book is about a woman named Vera, who was raised in the most disgusting household imaginable, turning her into a neat freak in her adult life. Once Vera finds out she is pregnant, she decides to try and bring in some money for herself and her disabled husband, Daniel. So, she entered the thriving door-to-door sales business as so many others did in the 80’s. All is well until she finds herself on the doorsteps of The Slob, bringing back the horrors of the life she tried so hard to forget. I remember the first time I read this book- I was at a lake house with my family for vacation. We were having a chill middle of the day where we all just sat around doing what we wanted. For me, this was sitting on the boat, docked, reading, and bobbing on the water. I sat down and didn’t move for an hour and a half until I had completed my book. When I say I was physically nauseous, I mean that with every fiber of my being, I had that “I am going to puke” feeling in my stomach. The adrenaline rush of reading something so horrifying has led me to love this book and recommend it to anyone who would think of reading it.Â
The second book is Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, originally released as Cádaver Exquisito in Argentina in 2017, and translated to English by Sarah Moses in 2020. This book is another splatterpunk novel, although this one is dystopian. I read Tender is the Flesh right after I finished The Slob on my family vacation. I know it sounds weird to read such messed up books on a family vacation, something that is supposed to be fun and positive, but what can I say? I love my splatterpunk genre and that’s how I get myself to read for fun. Anyways, this book is about a society where all meat has become contaminated by some sort of virus, and therefore not edible. Because of this, cannibalism becomes legal, normalized, and regulated. It centers around a human meat supplier named Marcos, and how his own personal losses lead him to conflicting societal views. I really enjoyed this book because I kind of thought this was something that could happen in the distant future. It is obviously dystopian because of that economic ruin/cataclysmic societal decline aspect, but to me, it seems real enough to where it could, maybe, occur one day in the future.Â
The last book I want to talk about is another by Aron Beauregard, but it is one of his newer works- Playground. The first thing I want to say about this book is it is beyond messed up. To me, it was worse than The Slob, not because of the gore aspect, but because of the moral aspect (and maybe a little bit because of the gore). Now to be honest, I thought that the plotline was a little silly, but I stuck with it and I am glad that I did. This book is about three low-income families who are invited to spend the day at the vast estate of Geraldine Borden. The parents are to leave their children to test out the innovative new playground equipment that Geraldine has been working on for decades and receive a large sum of money for doing so. However, this is definitely not regular playgroup equipment. The group of children are thrust into a realm of darkness beyond their worst nightmares and are forced to grow up fast in order to have any chance of survival. This was definitely a book that grabbed me right away and did not let me go until the bitter end. I think my favorite part of this book was the gore, and I am not saying that I didn’t like it in The Slob, but the details in this book are extraordinary and will lead to readers feeling disgusted after reading it.
I know that does not sound appealing to most, but for me, that is exactly why I read it, and all my other splatterpunk novels.Â