Self-Made Monsters by Rebecca Cuthbert
Alien Buddha Press (October 5, 2024)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Rebecca Cuthbert writes dark fiction and poetry. Readers of Cemetery Dance will be familiar with her work Creep This Way: How to Become a Horror Writer with 24 Tips to Get You Ghouling and her debut collection, In Memory of Exoskeletons. In the meantime, readers can enjoy Cuthbert’s work in her newest hybrid collection Self-Made Monsters.
Rebecca Cuthbert’s stories are delightfully shocking, in the best of ways. Reading a story like “Dare You” or “Makeover” is like experiencing a Twilight Zone episode for the first time. Readers are presented with a normal tale, a tale they are familiar with that has some quirky nuances, but they know where it’s going to go, because there are only two or three directions a tale about a dare in a local haunted house or a plastic surgery could go. Cuthbert’s skill is in subverting those expectations or cliches in such a way that is not surreal or bizarre, but so fresh and blunt that it’s even more haunting and scary.
Cuthbert’s poems are equally as enthralling, though possibly less horrific and more humorous. Poems like “Lake Erie Omen” and the near sea shanty “Mistress Meg O’Malley” are dark and threatening, but are so full of Cuthbert’s trademark feminist triumph, that the horror is almost excused in the name of delightful vengeance. Though not truly scary, they serve almost as emotional counterweights from the heavier fiction, and are deliberately lighter in tone, though no less skillfully crafted.
Rebecca Cuthbert is just starting to make her mark on horror as a poet, fiction writer, and non-fiction writer. Self-Made Monsters is yet another example of why this is. Whether it’s her shockingly original short stories or her delightfully dark and vengeful poems, Cuthbert’s writing is fresh and clever. Fans of horror, especially those who want to catch an author who is certainly poised to be one of the next big things early, will absolutely want to read this book.
