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A review by morganjanedavis
We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric LaRocca
5.0
"All people are like that. Eager consumers of someone else's pain. Whether they know it or not. Why deny them what they want?"
We Can Never Leave This Place is set in a society that is plagued with war, famine, and hardship. Mara, our main character, is a fifteen year old who has been labeled as a storyteller (cool and admonishing by her mother, affectionately by her father) often leaning into narratives woven from her active imagination. Mara's already meager existence comes to a halt when her father is brutally murdered. With only her mother to lean on, Mara begins to feel a new sense of helplessness in the fact that the parent that loved and understood her most is now gone forever. Upon her father's death, a stranger named Rake arrives at their apartment and offers to provide Mara and her mother protection from the horrors that have taken over their city. Only time will tell if this stranger will offer protection or bring further destruction into the already corrupt lives of this family.
I feel like no one can fit as many horrors into a tiny 92 page novella like LaRocca does. I'm not talking about blood-n-guts gore (Though of course there's that too). I'm talking about deeply rooted familial traumas, a maternal relationship that lacks humanity, and multiple instances of deep abuse that bruises the reader, too. I was fooled by what I thought were little glimmers of hope, only to have my feet knocked out from under me and to fall flat on my face, again. and again. and again. The seemingly brighter portions of the novella were showcased just long enough for the reader to believe that there was some semblance of hope for Mara only for these to be quickly dimmed by the reality of the bleakness she faced. It HURT! WCNLTP is sensory enveloping. I could vividly picture the dank, sewage ridden apartment. I could hear and feel the bombs dropping from the sky and shaking the complex. When Rake described his meals of the past, I had to step away for a few minutes. LaRocca's writing style is beautiful and completely unique, using harrowing fantasy and horror elements that perfectly showcase the allegory that lies beneath the surface, which is equally, if not more dismal.
This is the type of book that begs to stick around, and it does. Thank you to the author, Eric LaRocca for sending me an ARC of this novella for review. The publication date is June 24, 2022--don't sleep on it.
We Can Never Leave This Place is set in a society that is plagued with war, famine, and hardship. Mara, our main character, is a fifteen year old who has been labeled as a storyteller (cool and admonishing by her mother, affectionately by her father) often leaning into narratives woven from her active imagination. Mara's already meager existence comes to a halt when her father is brutally murdered. With only her mother to lean on, Mara begins to feel a new sense of helplessness in the fact that the parent that loved and understood her most is now gone forever. Upon her father's death, a stranger named Rake arrives at their apartment and offers to provide Mara and her mother protection from the horrors that have taken over their city. Only time will tell if this stranger will offer protection or bring further destruction into the already corrupt lives of this family.
I feel like no one can fit as many horrors into a tiny 92 page novella like LaRocca does. I'm not talking about blood-n-guts gore (Though of course there's that too). I'm talking about deeply rooted familial traumas, a maternal relationship that lacks humanity, and multiple instances of deep abuse that bruises the reader, too. I was fooled by what I thought were little glimmers of hope, only to have my feet knocked out from under me and to fall flat on my face, again. and again. and again. The seemingly brighter portions of the novella were showcased just long enough for the reader to believe that there was some semblance of hope for Mara only for these to be quickly dimmed by the reality of the bleakness she faced. It HURT! WCNLTP is sensory enveloping. I could vividly picture the dank, sewage ridden apartment. I could hear and feel the bombs dropping from the sky and shaking the complex. When Rake described his meals of the past, I had to step away for a few minutes. LaRocca's writing style is beautiful and completely unique, using harrowing fantasy and horror elements that perfectly showcase the allegory that lies beneath the surface, which is equally, if not more dismal.
This is the type of book that begs to stick around, and it does. Thank you to the author, Eric LaRocca for sending me an ARC of this novella for review. The publication date is June 24, 2022--don't sleep on it.