Helpmeet

Books | Fiction / Horror

3.6

Naben Ruthnum

WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALISTIGNYTE AWARD FINALISTIt's 1900, and Louise Wilk is taking her dying husband from Manhattan to the upstate orchard estate where he grew up. Dr. Edward Wilk is wasting away from a mysterious affliction acquired in a strange encounter: but Louise soon realizes that her husband's worsening condition may not be a disease at all, but a transformative phase of existence that will draw her in as much more than a witness."At the bitter end of the 19th century, a loyal wife cares tenderly for her dissolute husband as he nears his death from a mysterious, gruesomely corrosive disease. Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum is a sumptuous excursion into surreal body horror and an unsparing exploration of the extreme frontiers of connubial devotion. Ruthnum delivers a uniquely unsettling Gothic love story-and it is first and foremost a love story-evoking the grisly Edwardian tales of W.W. Jacobs, William Hope Hodgson and Algernon Blackwood, while drawing in such modern masters as Barker, Del Toro and Cronenberg. Brief enough to be read in an evening, it holds certain images so grotesque that they will linger in your dreams for weeks."- David Demchuk, Award-winning author of The Bone Mother, and RED X

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Author

Naben Ruthnum

Pages

Publisher

Undertow Publications

Published Date

2022-05-24

ISBN

1988964385 9781988964386

Community ReviewsSee all

" started out decently strong: good body horror, good intrigue. I think it kinda puttered out from there . It was too short for the quality to drastically decline, I didn’t dislike the setting. It’s just as the mystery unfolded it felt like there was a half-hearted attempt at a theme. The newly introduced characters had vague motive, and the root of the sickness was poorly described which paled in comparison to the earlier graphic content. I could not fathom the “flower” or what it represented. "

lizard

"Unfortunately I just didn't care about anything or anyone in this wee, gross baby. The body horror, however, was pretty graphic and pretty gnarly. So, props to the author. I think I might have enjoyed this as a more fleshed out full novel."

Jordan Elizabeth

"This was a strange little novella and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's 1900 and Louise's husband is dying of a syphilis-like illness. He was a surgeon and she had worked in the same hospital so they approach his dissolution with a sort of clinical detachment that can sometimes be more horrifying than if they were shocked about it. They (especially Louise) are also dealing with the judgement from others based on the nature of the (both assumed and actual) illness, which I thought was well done. I liked the end point and what came from that, but I could not understand why Louise made the decisions that she did. She came across as a bit of a cypher in a way that made her ultimate decision seem a bit far fetched. I also wish we had gotten a bit more from the instigator, because I wasn't really clear on what her goal was."

awesome_user_984860

"This is giving the same vibes as that movie “Men” from 2022. Weird and gross and confusing. 2.75⭐️"

awesome_user_53873

"3.5"