Tell Me I'm Worthless

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Tell Me I'm Worthless is a defiant love letter to the lost, reminding us that win or lose, live or die, we can still save our souls by choosing love.” — Maya Deane, author of Wrath Goddess Sing I don’t have many friends, but last year I began to ask whoever I could about hauntings, in the vague hope that somebody would understand what I meant when I said ‘hauntings’. Most people have a ghost story of some kind, even if they don’t believe in ghosts. Maybe their Great-grandma came to sit at the end of their bed for a month after she died, or they heard footsteps from the attic where there couldn’t have been anyone to make them. I’d try to ask casually, at bars or on the internet, have you ever experienced a haunting? I made sure to phrase it like that. Not have you ever seen a ghost? I wanted to know about hauntings, specifically. One common thread which interested me was that many of the people who answered said that their places of work were haunted. This was actually more common than peoples’ houses being haunted, which I thought was strange, but then again, Bly Manor from The Turn of the Screw was a place of work for the Governess and every big imposing house in the country has people working in it, cleaning, cooking and these days, now nobody lives in them, giving tours, maybe acting out scenes for tourists.

From Alison Rumfitt, the author of Tell Me I’m Worthless—“a triumph of transgressive queer horror” ( Publishers Weekly) — comes Brainwyrms, a searing body horror novel of obsession, violence, and pleasure.It feels like an anecdote that was meant to describe something, a metaphor about late capitalism, hauntology, about how work turns us all into ghosts, repeating the same learned actions over and over again for eternity. For that person, the wonder and the possibility and the horror of a haunting was just, in the end, somebody else doing their job for them. there isn't a whole lot to say about the characters or plot itself beyond any of that, because in a way, the book seems more like a political statement. which is fair, if that was the intention, but as far as stories-as-political-statements go, this is more ham-handed than most. there is an art to gracefully weaving political stances into fiction, and TMIW is pretty much What Not To Do At A Stoplight. One of the oldest, most effective “creepypastas” (the internet’s version of an urban myth), this first appeared in 2009, telling the story of a fictional children’s television series. Candle Cove is a brilliant example of how to use the message-board structure to create a disturbing piece of fiction, and how myths, folklore and unsettling tales mutate and grow in whatever new settings they find themselves. Tell Me I'm Worthless, originally publisher by Cipher Press in 2021, was rereleased on January 17, 2023 by Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio.

now for the plot, which can be summed up as 'what if hill house were actually powered by evil nazi ghosts' - or to put it specifically, the spirit of capitalist white supremacy in england. i am not joking, this book has zero subtlety, grace or wit about it. it's childlike in how naked the metaphors are, how direct it is in the stances it takes. there is no room for any alternative readings. this book is basically what it says on the tin. Okay, now this is experimental and scary! Alison Rumfitt tells the story of Alice, Ila, and Hannah, three friends whose lives are forever transformed by the experiences they make in an old, haunted house. Its name: Albion, which is an ancient name for Great Britain. So what we get is a story about the phsyical and mainly psychological damage a societal majority can impose on minorities, in this case a trans woman who is also haunted by queer-icon-turned-hatemonger Morrissey (Alice), a PoC with Israeali and Pakistani roots whom Albion has turned into a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, so a TERF (Ila), and Hannah, who disappears inside Albion. Gripping, unsettling, compulsive, spicy, and, in the end, deeply moving. I loved it.” —Molly Smith, co-author of Revolting Prostitutes I sometimes think that what I want is really misogynistic. Sometimes in the worst moments I ask if the TERFs are right and me wanting a cunt and tits and nice hair is because I'm a self-centred male monster and I want to be in bathrooms and changing rooms and I want to win women's sports competitions and laugh because they can't say anything and I want to win the Women's Fiction Prize and they'll say but look that's not a woman and the thought police will come for them for thinking that but in actual fact they'll probably just get an OBE for it and get a book deal and then what will I be? I want to be a woman. I am a woman.A hallucinogenic, powerful, transgressive novel that uncompromisingly goes into uncomfortable territory and then wallows there, digging deeper and deeper into the things that make us human, and eventually posits that love might be the way out of the things that trap us the hardest.” — Locus Gripping, unsettling, compulsive, spicy, and, in the end, deeply moving. I loved it.”— Molly Smith, co-author of Revolting Prostitutes

This amazing work of trans fiction about houses, hauntings, and horrors is going to be the horror book everyone is discussing next year.”— Book Riot Thank you to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me copies to read and review. I would recommend the audiobook as a medium for this.A gripping, hallucinogenic haunted house novel as righteously angry as it is horrifying, Tell Me I'm Worthless unflinchingly lays bare the personal and cultural scars we wear, endure, and inflict.”— Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and The Pallbearers Club Graphic depictions of gore, violence and sexual abuse indulgently act as the primary vehicles to drive the escalation of horror forward. The character work is good, Alice, Ila, and Hannah feel like fully formed people while at the same time, symbolic. I’ll admit, transgressive works of fiction fly over my head sometimes and this book made me feel confused. It’s riddled with terrible ideologies, antisemitism, racism, populism, I mean…you name it, it comes up in here. The House is a whole *other* character I forgot to mention. There is a story to follow here, Tell Me I’m Worthless has a plot and it’s there in the synopsis for you but honestly, it’s more than that because this book feels personal and it’s going to hit you different than it will anyone else, you’ll have to just decide if you’re ready for that. For me, my mind and body were ready, but my heart was resistant. It really did hurt too much. An utterly harrowing experience. Like all iconic masterworks of horror fiction, Tell Me I'm Worthless rips you apart and then tenderly pieces you together until you're something entirely new.” —Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke When a transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, sleeping with strangers, pushing away her friends. Then, she meets Vanya. Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya.