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Hooks and Slaughterhouse
"Once upon a hollowed out moon, my liver withers ..."
The Bloodless girl is haunted by confusing memories of her cannibalistic worm mother. Did the Bloodless girl bury her worm mother in salt? Where have all the worm siblings gone? And how did the Bloodless girl end up on a curving rural road that leads to nowhere and everywhere? The Bloodless girl can't remember. All she knows is that dust fills her arteries and the worm mother is gone. Accompanied by a skeletal pumpkin and devil tree, the Bloodless girl journeys through the New Jersey backwoods in search of a hilltop slaughterhouse that is the key to regaining her blood and learning the truth about the worm mother's disappearance.
'Hooks and Slaughterhouse: a novel' by Alana I. Capria ('Organ Meat, Killing Me' and '3 Pieces from The Bovine Uterus') is a groundbreaking work of experimental horror based on New Jersey’s urban legends. Illustrations by Rita Okusako. Production by Montag Press Transmedia Collective.
FOLLOW THE BLOODLESS GIRL at www.hooksandslaughterhousebook.com. Visit the author at http://alanaicapria.com/. Visit the illustrator at http://ritaokusako.com/. Visit Montag Press at http://montagpress.com/.
The Bloodless girl is haunted by confusing memories of her cannibalistic worm mother. Did the Bloodless girl bury her worm mother in salt? Where have all the worm siblings gone? And how did the Bloodless girl end up on a curving rural road that leads to nowhere and everywhere? The Bloodless girl can't remember. All she knows is that dust fills her arteries and the worm mother is gone. Accompanied by a skeletal pumpkin and devil tree, the Bloodless girl journeys through the New Jersey backwoods in search of a hilltop slaughterhouse that is the key to regaining her blood and learning the truth about the worm mother's disappearance.
'Hooks and Slaughterhouse: a novel' by Alana I. Capria ('Organ Meat, Killing Me' and '3 Pieces from The Bovine Uterus') is a groundbreaking work of experimental horror based on New Jersey’s urban legends. Illustrations by Rita Okusako. Production by Montag Press Transmedia Collective.
FOLLOW THE BLOODLESS GIRL at www.hooksandslaughterhousebook.com. Visit the author at http://alanaicapria.com/. Visit the illustrator at http://ritaokusako.com/. Visit Montag Press at http://montagpress.com/.
- GenresHorror
196 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2013
About the author
Alana I. Capria
11 books5 followersAlana I. Capria is the author of "Mother Walked Into the Lake," "Wrapped in Red," and "Hooks and Slaughterhouse." She resides in Northern New Jersey with her husband and rabbit. Her website is http://alanaicapria.com
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 3, 2015
A very interesting story. It kept reminding me of a macabre, R-Rated version of Alice in Wonderland. The imagery was straight out of a dream, and the pace kept the hits coming. The book sparked my interest about the legend of the New Jersey Devil, and any book that prompts me to read more about something else from within its pages is definitely a book worth reading.
October 2, 2024
I was introduced to this author years ago and never did a "deep dive" into her work. I should have done that much sooner. Hooks and Slaughterhouse is wonderfully imaginative. Unconventional yet memorable. It resonates with me where so many other people who attempt a similar style failed. This is how you write experimental prose!
March 10, 2013
Hooks and Slaughterhouse is everything I want an indie horror novel to be: quirky, fun, scary as hell, and totally unexpected. The limitless creativity of Alana I. Capria brings us a world at once familiar, filled with normal figures from our experience, and completely strange, presented as alive, writhing, and hungry. Like an incantation, reading Hooks and Slaughterhouse summons the ghost of the Bloodless Girl. She haunts our imaginations in the same way her world is haunted by monsters. Needless to say, the Weird abounds in this off-the-mainstream novel.
Capria is from New Jersey and the backwoods legends of that area figure prominently in the novel. The Jersey Devil erupts into the story with more personality and sympathetic character than ever before captured. Some monstrous characters are known from world myth, like the Baba Yaga, and some are very real incarnations of evil, like the infamous Devil Tree. Through its experimental structure, Capria's writing dispels everything know and, through its wild content, confronts the unknown without prejudice. The result is an initially confused, but ultimately liberating reading experience. Capria re-contextualizes the body in its own terms, forcing the reader to confront their own flesh as meat through the eyes of carnivorous monsters and their own blood through the plight of the Bloodless Girl. Capria doesn't tease the reader with paranoia, but fearlessly confronts the Other in surprising and humorous ways.
Hooks and Slaughterhouse is a great find for those looking to experience the new standard of creativity in indie horror.
Capria is from New Jersey and the backwoods legends of that area figure prominently in the novel. The Jersey Devil erupts into the story with more personality and sympathetic character than ever before captured. Some monstrous characters are known from world myth, like the Baba Yaga, and some are very real incarnations of evil, like the infamous Devil Tree. Through its experimental structure, Capria's writing dispels everything know and, through its wild content, confronts the unknown without prejudice. The result is an initially confused, but ultimately liberating reading experience. Capria re-contextualizes the body in its own terms, forcing the reader to confront their own flesh as meat through the eyes of carnivorous monsters and their own blood through the plight of the Bloodless Girl. Capria doesn't tease the reader with paranoia, but fearlessly confronts the Other in surprising and humorous ways.
Hooks and Slaughterhouse is a great find for those looking to experience the new standard of creativity in indie horror.
April 13, 2015
The feel of this novel is an odd combination of grotesque and whimsical. The Bloodless Girl is the main character, and through her eyes we experience her dreamlike journey as she searches for her roots and a sort of self-completion in a slaughterhouse in which she wants to bathe in a tub of blood. We meet several characters along the way, some of whom are friendly, some of whom are not, all of whom flow through numerous shifts in form as they get disemboweled, dismembered, squeezed to a pulp, sewed with needles, etc. The Bloodless Girl is not a particularly nice person, but she's strong and steadfast in her mission, and somehow we get to like her. So do many of the characters--a skeletal pumpkin, a devil tree, a bunch of eyeballs, and the Jersey Devil--whose loyalty to the Bloodless Girl I found quite moving.
Once I got past a bit of nausea at the constant images of raw meat, needles, and the spontaneous departure of flesh from various bodies, I found the writing lovely--evocative and provocative all at once, a work that follows its own rules. It builds upon the archetypes stimulated in the reader until by the end we are sharing the author's dream in a way that lingers far after we've turned the last page. Despite its subject matter, after finishing I'm not sure I would actually call this horror.
Once I got past a bit of nausea at the constant images of raw meat, needles, and the spontaneous departure of flesh from various bodies, I found the writing lovely--evocative and provocative all at once, a work that follows its own rules. It builds upon the archetypes stimulated in the reader until by the end we are sharing the author's dream in a way that lingers far after we've turned the last page. Despite its subject matter, after finishing I'm not sure I would actually call this horror.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews