We Are All Completely Fine, by Daryl Gregory
Five survivors of assorted horror scenarios, from "plucky boy detective battles eldritch horrors" to "partly eaten by cannibals," form a therapy group.
This was what I wanted The Final Girls Support Group to be. A lot of it actually takes place in the sessions and it really is primarily about the group, to the extent that it's narrated as "we." Gregory's wife is a therapist, and the group sessions ring true within their weird framework.
One of the fun things is that the horrors the characters encountered are all essentially variants on pulp horror tropes: Lovecraftian horrors, cannibal families, glasses that enable you to see the monsters living among us, cults, demon lovers, possession, artistic serial killers, and so forth.
Once the survivors start talking to each other, they find that though their traumas and responses to it are very different, they have some very important commonalities: knowledge of a particular type of dark side, for instance, but also having a trauma so unusual that it's either impossible to discuss or a temptation to make it your calling card. This gets into the thing Gregory does so well, which is melding realistic psychology with horror tropes.
I wish this was a bit longer, to delve more into the characters and their lives, but it's very good as is. (It's a novella.) There's a sequel hook for a story that never materialized (there are some prequel stories about Harrison the former boy detective, which I haven't read), but if you know in advance that the question of whether the monsters have a larger plan is not going to be answered, the ending works well on a character level.
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This was what I wanted The Final Girls Support Group to be. A lot of it actually takes place in the sessions and it really is primarily about the group, to the extent that it's narrated as "we." Gregory's wife is a therapist, and the group sessions ring true within their weird framework.
One of the fun things is that the horrors the characters encountered are all essentially variants on pulp horror tropes: Lovecraftian horrors, cannibal families, glasses that enable you to see the monsters living among us, cults, demon lovers, possession, artistic serial killers, and so forth.
Once the survivors start talking to each other, they find that though their traumas and responses to it are very different, they have some very important commonalities: knowledge of a particular type of dark side, for instance, but also having a trauma so unusual that it's either impossible to discuss or a temptation to make it your calling card. This gets into the thing Gregory does so well, which is melding realistic psychology with horror tropes.
I wish this was a bit longer, to delve more into the characters and their lives, but it's very good as is. (It's a novella.) There's a sequel hook for a story that never materialized (there are some prequel stories about Harrison the former boy detective, which I haven't read), but if you know in advance that the question of whether the monsters have a larger plan is not going to be answered, the ending works well on a character level.
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