Paul Tremblay | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Booklist: Invisible Disabilities in Horror for YA Readers

Disability is one way that monsters are created in the horror genre. Monstrosity is usually expressed visually, though, especially in the classic texts– think The Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mr. Hyde of Jekyll and Hyde fame. Or if we don’t actually see the disfigurement, many monsters, from the Phantom of the Opera to Michael Myers, are masked. Physically marking a character is a way of representing that person as the “other”; abnormal in some way, which is disturbing to those who see themselves as “normal”. It is a problematic representation of disability in literature, and I think we see it more strongly in the horror genre because for so many people it is disturbing and scary to face anyone who isn’t like them. Mary Shelley’s description of Frankenstein’s monster and his friendship with the little blind girl is a perfect example of how dependent we are on sight as a cue to decide who is a monster and who is not.

What about the disabilities that aren’t immediately visible? Yes, those do very much exist, and shape personality. Putting aside the curse of paranormal abilities, like the”Typhoid Mary” powers Jenny Morton displays in Jenny Pox, disabilities and disorders that can’t be seen do appear in horror, especially as victims. What’s really neat to see is when a character with an invisible disability flips that trope over. But honestly, as someone who has epilepsy, I can tell you that ANY recognition of my disability that appears in fiction, no matter how problematic, has always been welcome (even when I hate the depiction) because it means I’ve been seen. And it meant even more to me when I was a teen, because there really was absolutely nothing at all. Here are five books you could hand to a teen dealing with an invisible disability.

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

This is not technically a YA novel, but it is told from the point of view of a young woman, with extensive flashbacks to her childhood, and the central character is a teen dealing with… we don’t know exactly what. Teenaged Marjorie might be possessed, or she might be developing schizophrenia. It is actually possible to meet someone with schizophrenia and not know that’s the case. And as far as I remember, schizophrenia is not mentioned outright, even though Marjorie is under the care of a psychiatrist at the beginning of the story. This is actually one of the more visual depictions of an invisible disability, as Marjorie’s actions also suggest that she might be possessed, which lands her family on a reality television show.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

This is the first book in the Gemma Doyle trilogy. It’s almost an trope for a British girl who grows up in India in the late 1800s to be sent to England for further education after her mother dies, usually at a boarding school, and that’s what happens to Gemma, who is also clairvoyant. She and her friends discover an entrace to magical realms where they can have their hearts’ desires– darker than it sounds. One of Gemma’s friends, Pippa, has epilepsy, and during a seizure travels to the magical realms. Pippa must keep her epilepsy a secret, so she won’t be discovered to be “damaged goods” before she can be married. Gemma follows her, but Pippa has found true love there and refuses to return to a life of illness. Pippa’s story brought tears to my eyes. I found Bray’s straightforward descriptions of Pippa’s seizures to be accurate, although you should never put a wooden spoon in anyone’s mouth.

The Dark Between by Sonia Gensler

I’ve just finished this one, and I really recommend it. It also takes place near the turn of the 20th century, when spiritualism was in vogue. Three teenagers brought together by coincidence turn out to have more in common than they expected come across some mysterious murders that might have something to do with electrical experiments to enhance the brain with psychic powers. Kate, the youngest, is an impoverished orphan who loses her job as a “spirit guide” for a medium when the medium is exposed by a skeptic. Asher is an American teen at loose ends, traveling alone, who is considering attending Cambridge. Elsie is a dreamy, beautiful girl who has been sent away by her parents, whose mind is clouded by drugs she takes to control her epilepsy. Elsie’s seizures began after she was struck by lightning, and she can see visions of the dead during them. The attitudes Elsie has faced and expects to face after the secret of her epilepsy is exposed, and her drugged feelings, make her a more sympathetic character than you would expect, as she is not especially thoughtful or rational. Elsie is no Beth March, shy and pure; she’s drawn as a complex character, a real girl with burgeoning sexuality and intense emotions who makes bad decisions that make you want to smack her. Score one for Sonia Gensler in her development of a character with epilepsy who has more than one dimension.
Dark Muse by David Simms

Muddy, Poe, Otis, and Corey are The Accidentals, a band of misfits. All four love music, and all four have problems they have to face. Muddy is dyslexic, Poe is legally blind and has a difficult home situation, Otis has brittle bones, and Corey has a checkered past and is a year behind in school. When Muddy’s older brother Zack, a troubled and gifted guitarist, disappears at “the crossroads”, Muddy and the rest of The Accidentals decide to cross over to an alternate reality where music has real power, and find him. Author David Simms has worked with many special education students, and draws realistic, sympathetic portraits of his characters. It’s cool to see ordinary, music-loving kids with disabilities as the heroes of the story.

Cryer’s Cross by Lisa McMann

Sixteen year old Kendall has obsessive compulsive disorder. She’s been able to function in a carefully constructed world, and that begins to disintegrate when a girl disappears, and then, shortly after that, her boyfriend. Did Kendall have something to do with the disappearances? Or will her obsessiveness lead her to become a victim? Kendall is a very sympathetic character struggling with a difficult situation that is complicated by her obsessive compulsive disorder.

Book List: The Dangers of Reality Television

People have been fearmongering about the dangers of television for decades. Before television became common in every household, they warned of the effects of comic books and rock and roll. More recently, criticism has been aimed at violent video games, heavy metal, and the Internet. But always there in the middle, media critics have had something to say about television, and usually it’s not good.

But as a culture, we got used to television. Then the same old thing, year after year, got kind of boring, and the question for the networks and the cable channels became “what do we do now?” Because we could record the shows and skip past commercials, television shows had to be edgy, to provide something different that would catch our attention enough to really grab us for long enough to get us to sit through an entire show, every week. And what’s more interesting than peeking into someone else’s life?

Actual reality isn’t all that interesting to watch, and it’s also got some really disgusting moments. Who wants to stare at people watching TV, or clipping their toenails? No, it’s the drama of taking people out of their own reality and making them interact in a completely unreal, compressed, environment that is so fascinating. A show like Survivor is kind of like a nonlethal re-enactment of Lord of the Flies— you watch it knowing every episode will mean the end for one of the characters. Watching The Osbournes gives the viewer a window into a world that’s totally bizarre to the rest of us, but normal for the participants. You know it’s all edited to create a storyline that will fit into a half hour or an hour of television, but it gives you a thrill. And it gives viewers a window that not only allows them see what’s going on, but to separate from it. It’s kind of like watching the gladiators in the ring at the Coliseum, from the stands. It’s a game, but it’s not. And that’s what makes reality television the perfect setting for a horror story. Here are seven novels that take advantage of the worst aspects of reality television to create nightmares for their characters. As always, not every book on this list will be appropriate or appreciated by every person, so know your reader!

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay (pre-order)

This book messed with my head. It holds a funhouse mirror up to the creepiness of media manipulation. At the center of the story is Merry. As a child, she witnessed unexplainable and disturbing behaviors from her older sister that became the center of a reality television show, and resulted in family tragedy. The novel itself approaches the story from many angles. Merry as as a young adult, years later; Merry as a child living through the events that changed her life; and a mystery blogger dissecting the show in minute detail all get their say. This was sent to us for review, and is not even out yet, but it falls in the category of “unforgettable” for me. For the purposes of this list, though, it succeeds tremendously as a mind-bender that indicts the media, and especially reality television, for altering events, and lives, to fit a predetermined narrative.

The Running Man by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)

The Running Man takes place in a dystopian future where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is so tremendous that the desperate are willing to put themselves in lethal, televised ‘games’ for others’ entertainment. It’s a fast-paced, gripping, terrifying, science fiction thriller. When Stephen King wrote The Running Man in 1982, I am sure he had no idea how prescient the book would be. At that time 2025 must have seemed endlessly far into the future, and the first reality television show was years away from being created. And yet, as we approach that time, much of what he predicted has become reality– affordable health care still hasn’t made the scene, income inequality has become more and more severe, and people are still bloodthirsty, greedy, and selfish. King created a horrifying world that has become even more so as time marches us forward to his future, set in the year 2025. As a reader’s advisory note, there is also a movie, with Arnold Schwarznegger, and a great media tie-in to one of the lesser-known works of Stephen King.

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

A gritty, desolate atmosphere pervades Broken Monsters. While it’s framed as a serial killer novel, it is bizarre from the very beginning, with the discovery of the first body. As you might expect with either a serial killer novel or a horror novel, there’s a fair amount of gore, but it doesn’t overwhelm the story. The plot follows the detective on the case, her daughter, a homeless man, an Internet journalist trying to get his YouTube videos to go viral, and the serial killer. This is a memorable book for me not just because of the storytelling, character development, originality, and atmosphere of the story but also because of the effect the Internet journalist and his videos have on the events of the story. While Beukes is taking a larger look at how social media affects our reality, it’s the journalist’s actions during the climax of events that really struck home with me.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

For those who have never heard of The Hunger Games, it’s a YA dystopian novel in which a totalitarian government randomly chooses two candidates from each of its districts to participate in a televised competition in which the participants all attempt to kill each other in order to be the last one standing. The wealthy can slant the competition by providing favorite competitors with gifts. This is media used as not just an opiate, but as a weapon. It’s gripping, suspenseful, and manages to effectively integrate both friendship and love into a very hostile and dangerous situation that most people really do see as a game. It is the first in a series that also includes Catching Fire and Mockingjay. All of the books have been made into movies. In a move that is painfully ironic, the CW is making a reality show based on the book.

Kitty’s House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn

This paranormal novel is the seventh title in the Kitty Norville series. Talk show radio host and werewolf Kitty Norville agrees to participate in an all-supernatural reality television show, expecting it to be a typical reality show with a focus on the drama that emerges from forced interpersonal relationships. Anyone who has read Agatha Christie can probably guess what starts happening once the participants arrive in the remote mountain lodge where the show will be filmed. Fans of Kim Harrison may enjoy this one.
Fragment by Warren Fahy

Scientists on a ship in the South Pacific who are participating in an “educational” reality television show, SeaLife, land on a remote island, only to be attacked by bizarre predators, with the cameras rolling. Is the footage real, or is it a hoax? The U.S. government doesn’t wait to find out– it blockades the island to prevent the creatures from escaping, Botanist Nell Duckworth, one of the participants on the show, is on the team of scientists that is sent to investigate the giant, ferocious, arthropods that populate the island. Grounded in science, this frightening, fast-paced thriller has been compared to Jurassic Park.

Castaways by Brian Keene

Trigger warning for graphic rape, gore, and violence. There are a lot of horror readers who enjoy having these ratcheted up– and this novel does that. This is Keene’s tribute to the work of Richard Laymon. According to reviews I’ve read, it’s not Keene’s most original work, either in style or content, although it’s well-paced and reasonably suspenseful, so if you are looking for a good introduction to Keene’s work, you might want to try a different book. However, the plot certainly fits our theme: contestants on a Survivor-style reality show, Castaways, are trapped on the island by a storm. The island, originally thought to be deserted, is in fact populated with monstrous cannibals with horrifying plans for the women trapped on the island.