Night Rooms

by Gina Nutt

Lovers of the personal essay will be thrilled by this innovative collection. --Publishers Weekly
"In a horror movie, an infected character may hide a bite or rash, an urge, an unwellness. She might withdraw or act out, or behave as if nothing is the matter, nothing has happened. Any course of action opposite saying how she feels suggests suffering privately is preferable to the anticipated betrayal of being cast out."

Night Rooms is a poetic, intimate collection of personal essays that weaves together fragmented images from horror films and cultural tropes to meditate on anxiety and depression, suicide, body image, identity, grief, and survival.

Whether competing in shopping mall beauty pageants, reflecting on childhood monsters and ballet lessons, or recounting dark cultural ephemera while facing grief and authenticity in the digital age, Gina Nutt's shifting style echoes the sub-genres that Night Rooms highlights--spirit-haunted slow burns, possession tales, slashers, and revenge films with a feminist bent.

Refracting life through the lens of horror films, Night Rooms masterfully leaps between reality and movies, past and present--because the "final girl's" story is ultimately a survival story told another way.

Whether she's uncovering connections between her homebuyer's course and haunted house movies, her wedding anniversary and Victorian taxidermy tableaux, or her shopping mall's glass elevator and destiny, Gina Nutt writes prose so astonishing I want to read it in an MRI machine just to confirm that every part of my brain indeed lit up. Night Rooms is a brilliant, beautiful, boundlessly inventive book. --Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Horror, Memoir, Poetry, Short Stories, Pop Culture

186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 23, 2021

Reviews

[Rennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m torn on this one — it had some high highs but elsewhere it lost me. It’s one of those that contains a lot of deeply meaningful personal moments that will either resonate with you hard or else feel a bit curious as you fail to grasp the significance or what meaning exactly you should be taking from it. I’m pretty ok with that, because what I loved most about this book — and her gorgeous writing style in general — is how it made me think. It takes you so many places, mentally and in the odd and surprising locations she drops in (the Museum of Death, the Morbid Anatomy Museum) and is so strange and dark but also thoughtful and lovely. It puts you in a weird but not unpleasant mental state, if that makes sense.

The interweaving of pop culture/horror movie themes and stories was what initially made me hesitate about reading this, until I saw Elissa Washuta call it a sister book to White Magic (or something to that effect) and that book is the best thing I’ve read in forever, so obviously I was going to get this immediately. I’m not a horror fan but I did love them in an I’m-repelled-by-this-but-also-fascinated way in high school, so I was familiar with a lot of her references, and some are just basic pop culture knowledge. I didn’t find that the concept of horror movies as an idea made as much sense against the personal narrative, but again, I didn’t really care. I liked the musing, meandering nature of it and the general undertone of menace it has. Like much of life, which seems to be a point she’s making, in some way.

I see why Elissa Washuta made that connection between these two texts, and it’s what I loved about this when it’s at its best. It’s a similar dreamy style of “essays” that are really more choppy stream-of-consciousness memoir along with cultural observations broken into short paragraphs that quickly jump topics but pulling common threads along with them. She really has a talent for writing about tough, disturbing topics (mental illness, sexual assault, suicide) in a way that allows you to see how another person processes and lives with these events without being gut-punchingly painful to read and absorb. She has an interesting way of how much she reveals in the telling of it.

Very glad I read it, I just wanted it to always be as good as its best moments.

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 2 out of 5]

My review can be ignored. I’m rating this for my personal feelings and not as a public book reviewer.

I don’t resonate with these types of works - I think there is a neurodivergent clash that happens when I read stream of consciousness, mini essays (almost tweet-like writing) that causes me to get lost. I enjoyed a some of the sentiments, basically on a sentence level, but the narrative (and form) are too disjointed for me.

[Joey Shapiro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really 2.5 stars but it won me over a little more in the last section so I’m rounding up that extra half star for Gina. This is written in the same style as Maggie Nelson / Kate Zambreno / probably Jenny Offill (I haven’t read her yet but I know the vibe.....), in very short matter-of-fact little blocks of text that border on prose poetry. Here it feels a little put-on though, like it looks and sounds pretty but the writing just seems understated and vague for the sake of sounding weighty. A lot of these little essay chapters don’t really say a whole lot and seem to sort of hint at offscreen childhood trauma without ever addressing it directly or commenting on it, and the horror movie descriptions don’t really elevate it beyond the moment of recognition of “huh, I guess having creepy nightmares as a child is sorta like Poltergeist.” This changes in the last chapter, which does talk about death and grief with a lil more emotional directness than the chapters that came before, but up to that point it kind of felt like I was trudging along waiting for it to get to a thesis or a point. I sincerely couldn’t tell you what the book’s about! Nothing about this makes it bad necessarily, it just feels sort of like empty calories when the significance of each chapter / the book as a whole is so buried under extraneous references and ~restrained minimalist language~.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book and I was captivated by the writing. I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time. Highly recommended.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝑴𝒚 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒏𝒐 𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒊𝒏. 𝑰𝒕 𝒆𝒙𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒂𝒔 𝒇𝒂𝒓 𝒂𝒔 𝑰 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓.

Moments in life can induce emotions not unlike those horror movies provoke. Unsure what’s creeping around the corner, insidious illnesses, dangerous strangers, being swallowed by the dark… stage fright. Maybe so many people gravitate towards horror films because it is an escape from all the real things in life that give us the "heebie jeebies, the creeps”. In this collection of essays, Gina Nutt examines moments in her own life and scenes from horror movies, translating distress, deflecting misfortune, mulling over displays at the Pharmacy Museum in New Orleans and the many instruments of horror from days of old. Nature isn’t off the hook, it can devastate too- as she ponders the many disaster rides at theme parks.

There are the terrors particular to women, our biological clock, sometimes faulty. How we feel about our bodies, desire, our very sexuality which can be both pleasure and pain. Sickness that hits us from nowhere, feeling like a specimen before the doctor, wondering if something lethal is inside of you, the sickness of stress. Obsessive focus on worst case scenario scenes, and having filled up on horror movies supplies endless fodder for that. The mad feeling of an unquiet mind, the torment of knowing death waits for us all and how do we live happy lives while that hangs over our heads? Okay, so going to the Morbid Anatomy Museum is a little, well… morbid- but one has to wonder, if yesterdays science and norms are todays horrors, doesn’t it translate that the same will one day be said of our norms? We humans are strange creatures, and Gina Nutt indulges all the things that people are meant to avoid. It truly is the distance watching horror films provide that makes it ok to enjoy them, right?

Life has it’s grim moments, if you live long enough you will house illness, be party to grief, loss, have your own dark night of the soul, but there is always poetry and hope. There is balance, there will be sunny days, but remember too much light can be brutal too! As Gina Nutt writes, “Horror movies are contained catastrophes.” That could be it. We can live out our biggest fears and walk away alive.

This was an interesting, unique collection- I watched a lot of horror movies as a teenager. It was fun to be spooked, scared stupid! She takes intimate moments from her own life and intertwines the memories with pieces of horror films she has feasted on. It’s not all dark humor, there are tender and heartbreaking incidents, one involving suicide. Yes, a solid read for anyone who loves personal essays or horror.

Publication Date” March 23, 2021

Available now

TwoDollar Radio

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Night Rooms is a collection of essays that is like nothing I have experienced before. Personal, vulnerable, almost like journal entries, poetic and ornate. It took me a bit to get used to the structure but once I got familiar with the flow I surrendered myself to Nutt's lovely, fragmented pieces, with such keen and precise prose, letting her show me the way though different themes of death, grief, anxiety, body image, suicide and more using horror films as a conduit. This was a stirring collection I shall not soon forget! This will be available March 23rd.

Thank you to @twodollarradio for sharing this ARC with me, opinions are my own.
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[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chalk this up to user error. This was like abstract literary pointillism: in miniature there were beautiful, surprising strokes. Once the eye was no longer specifically affixed to it, it vanished. And as I pulled my view further out to try to take in the whole, nothing adhered together, no insight or meaning apparent.

These cultural observations paired in these specific ways with the author's personal vignettes likely has meaning to the author, but they sure didn't to me. Just a big ol' mess of personal and cultural musings that grasped for poetics and meaning. I found neither.

But I chalk this up to user error.

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was just lamenting on Instagram that all I want to hand out to my books at the moment are either 5* or 2*, sadly this is one for the 2* category. I just could not get on with this, both the writing and the concept theoretically sounds like my jam, practically it just left me in the dust wondering what is even going on. It was one from my last year's Christmas wish list and maybe some hidden part of me knew we wouldn't work out because it's the last of the 2022 gifted to me books that I picked up, right before this Christmas. Even though I was excited about it, maybe there was a reason other than the weird cover that I hesitated to dive in.

Extremely lyrically written memoir written in sometimes rather short essays where Nutt parallels moments in her life with Horror movies and tropes. It sounds so like my thing and I will likely endlessly pick up memoirs that promise some kind of integration with Horror. I honestly often did get the points Nutt was making, I feel like if you connect with the writing this might be winner for you but I found it vague and meandering to a point of obtuse shadows rather than clear images. The different paragraphs often appeared to be not connected with each other, like she was talking about opposing things within the same essays. Sometimes the Horror movies chosen made perfect sense (as when moving house she pulls in haunted house stories) but in others I could not for the life of me see why we are talking about certain movies now (as in chapter 10 where she was talking about the dating and the want to have sex as a girl but also fears and pressures and then pulls in "House of 1000 Corpses" and torture porn movies?). Thing is: I am happy to accept that I might have likely missed many points here. But I also feel like the way this was written didn't make the points very accessible. You had to dig and tear through the poetic musings, the hinted at events and thoughts. Part of me wants to say I was not in the right headspace for something this intricate last month but I am getting tired of having to apologize in my reviews if a book doesn't work for me. I didn't connect and that's okay. This wasn't for me but I am sure this works beautifully for someone, that's how it always works with books.

What was interesting is that this book is set in the area where I live. She mentions several towns and cities nearby including the mall closest to me! Naturally, I got some fun out of that. I just wish this book and me had more to share, we sound like we should be twins in our hearts but we don't beat to the same drum. This did have moments I liked though, the "Nightmare on Elm St" chapter with meditations on dreaming and dying. It was a more precise and a rather beautiful moment in here. Maybe that one worked so much better with her writing for me because dreams are vague and obtuse to begin with? But when flipping through it now for this review I realize there was so much that I only read within the last couple of weeks and I could not recall anything about it. I remembered that while reading I often couldn't remember from one day to the next what I just read, so little here was sticking with me. I want a book to stick and I truly wanted to get more out of this book, wanted it to be a book for me considering what it's doing. But I have to count my losses and move on to the next book that might deliver a better suited for me synergy of Horror and memoir.

[Briar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a challenging book for me. On one hand, the writing in this book is beautiful, poetic and captivating. On the other hand, I couldn't stand some of the writing style choices and I felt that parts of this book didn't need to be included at all.

There is a gimmick in this book where the author eludes to horror movies and it's supposed to relate back to her life (I think) but it really did not make sense to me. It felt super random and weird. The parts where the author just discussed her life where the parts I actually enjoyed. I think this book would have been better for me if she had simply stuck to that and gotten rid of the filler and gimmicky stuff.

This is written in short paragraph burst which sometimes relate and sometimes do not. I'm not sure if that's called a vignette or if I've gotten that mixed up? Anyway, I don't think that device is my favorite in the way it's done here. The chapters that were cohesive were very poignant but others felt totally disjointed.

I believe she is a poet by trade and I think I would be interested in giving her poetry a try as her writing is excellent, but this particular book did not work for me.

[Emily Stensloff · Rating 4 out of 5]

big fan of the vibes and super appreciative of the frank conversations about mental illness. the blending of horror and true crime with nutt's own experiences were really seamless, imo. there was A Lot i related to in this collection. i love a good stream of consciousness attempt.

if anything, i found myself frustrated at the vague descriptions and lack of titles in-text for some of the horror movies that were presented. it would have been even more powerful to connect the experiences with the fiction if everyone who was reading could reference directly which works were being alluded to in each instance, rather than the off-chance there was a quote included and was cited. considering that there was a works referenced section, it seems weird that they wouldn't have been cited or noted in-text as well. also, it has endnotes and i'm a footnote kinda girl. so i found some of the formatting to be ehh.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wilding unique approach to a memoir, I was captivated to the very last page.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of personal essays, which combined topics such as trauma and death with notable horror films. It really does hone in on the fact that so much of horror is derived from very real fears we have as humans, conscious or otherwise. Some of the essays towards the latter half of the book did start to blend together a little bit for me, but there were some really standout moments (particularly the essay recounting Nutt's experiences in pageants as a child juxtaposed with the concept of shopping malls in the 90s and their eventual decay). Nutt's writing is fluid and dreamlike at times, and I'd definitely check out more of her work if she decides to release anything else in the future.

[Beth Mowbray · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What do you get when you take a grouping of personal essays, infuse them liberally with horror and other pop culture references, then sprinkle in a dash of ‘90s nostalgia? The answer is simple: the best new release this reviewer has read so far in 2021!

With a stunningly original concept and precise execution, Gina Nutt’s debut essay collection NIGHT ROOMS is absolutely captivating! A series of compositions covering the landscape of a life in progress, NIGHT ROOMS puts feelings to experiences in a way readers never would have imagined possible … and one they have likely never seen before! Nutt shies away from nothing in her writing, taking bold chances with both the structure and the way she lays herself bare to the reader. From participating in childhood beauty pageants in a shopping mall to the adult milestone of buying a home, from sleepovers with high school friends to the loss of her father-in-law by suicide, Nutt’s essays weave back and forth through time, deconstructing everything from the most ordinary life events to the most painful.

Using what may at first appear to be an odd lens, Nutt has chosen to reflect upon these experiences primarily through a parallel with horror films. Jumping back and forth — often as frequently as every paragraph — between her own life and snippets of horror subgenres or oblique film references, Nutt weaves a thread between these two seemingly disparate points, pulling them closer and closer together with every word ...

It is difficult to put into words how Nutt combines these elements together to create a genuine, reflective experience without it coming across as overwritten, self-indulgent, or even ridiculous. But she does it, and does it oh so well! Perhaps it all works because ... the best scary stories are not those with empty thrills and jump scares, but those which lay bare the horrors of the human condition.”

Go to www.thenerddaily.com to read the full review! So many thanks to Two Dollar Radio for gifting me an advance copy!

[Hank]

Elliptical to the point of abstraction. I don't want to diminish Nutt's talent as a writer--she can turn a sentence in surprising ways--but these essays didn't do it for me. Her use of blank space, instead of making me pause and savor her paragraphs, just made my mind wander. As a lover of horror movies and experimental writing, I really wanted to like this book, and didn't. Oh well.

[Raelyn Torngren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review to come: but the short of it is this is one of the best things I’ve ever read.

[Gary Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really, truly beautiful moments throughout, but a bit too unfocused for my taste.

[Georgie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House, Night Rooms is a collection of chapters that use stories (specifically horror in this case) as a lens for the author's experiences and feelings. And that's the last I'll compare the two.

There isn't a coherent story to Night Rooms, and indeed, the subheading is "Essays." The essays are numbered rather than titled, and discuss Nutt's experiences with death, suicide, assault, and fear, often referencing horror movies or shows, poetry, lectures, and other books. She doesn't name the movies, just describes what happens in them ("The girl sleeps" "Two teenagers make out" etc). The titles aren't as important as the events and how they relate to what she is trying to say.

Nutt's prose is lovely and poetic. Her chapters are broken up into smaller pieces, and she goes between fiction and reality frequently. The book deals heavily with grief and fear, and living with those things. I don't think I connected to the essays as much as I would have liked, but they were personal, and they were well-written. There is a bibliography and a works referenced section at the end.

[Anjianie Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to apologize for sounding so dramatic but…I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire young adult life to find this book. Maybe it’s an east coaster thing (I know how pretentiously silly that sounds) but I have never in my 22 years of living read something that resonated so deeply with me. It felt as if the author skimmed all my diaries, examined the depths of my brain in my sleep, and wrote a book pandering entirely to not only my interests but my experiences as well. From the persistent theme of horror films to the analyses of generational trauma and the inescapable prevalence of death in the lives of every living person, Gina Nutt has reminded me how writing is one of the most powerful sources of healing and understanding.

In collaboration with my newfound journey on prescribed antidepressants, this book inspired me to apply to the same grad school program that the author completed. Is that embarrassing? Maybe. Do I wish with every cell in my body that I get accepted? Absofruitly

[Amr Jal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collection of essays where the authors writes about depression / suicide / sexuality/ gender with the lens of horror films and and tropes of horror films

This was a huge disappointment to me. The book -in an elevator pitch type of way- was made for me. Too bad the author herself had nothing interesting to say about her experiences or the horror imagery she uses. It is all vague descriptions of scenery and emotions with no core attached to the underlying structure of the essay. The author herself is clearly an emotive writer and has the skill to deliver writing effectively in that way, i might argue her editor should’ve pushed her more to add more substance ? And the whole motif of her not referencing the films but describing them doesn’t work at all if you dont have a strong knowledge of horror films.

Personally I don’t regret supporting this book because I do believe in the authors talent. It’s just i wish the publisher worked on it a bit more. It is such a cool concept, and ill probably give her future writing a shot.

[Lindsay Pugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to rate this because while a lot of the essays didn't work for me, I appreciate what Gina Nutt tries to do and know how fucking difficult it is to incorporate movies into personal essay. I will say that by the end of the book, I got used to her fragmentary style and didn't mind it as much, but the film elements bothered me throughout. I've seen most (maybe even all) of the films she describes but I was often still confused about how they related to the themes she hinted at within her personal life, mental health, childhood, etc. I constantly felt like I needed more context in order to fully understand what she was trying to tell me.

I'm probably not a great person to review this type of thing because it's very much not my vibe. I don't enjoy the ambiguous prose poetry style unless it's coming from like... Maggie Nelson. Reading it made me feel a little disjointed, like I smoked too much weed and tried to read Heidegger. I found myself confused from paragraph to paragraph. It all sounded beautiful, but what was the point?

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
TW: Suicide.
This collection feels a bit like climbing aboard a train embarking on a scenic journey through Gina Nutt's mind. Very much stream of consciousness with some paragraphs that felt like faint shadows of my own experiences; familiar, but not quite concrete. It is beautifully written but occasionally it felt like Gina had wandered off without me and I was following behind, waiting to recognize another landmark so I could get my bearings back. All in all, she certainly processed this portion of her grief journey in a much more eloquent manner than I did in my angry & disjointed journal following my loved one's suicide. I didn't feel like I had arrived anywhere when I closed the cover but the time spent was not lost.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel a kindred spirit in Gina Nutt. I bought this book without even reading it first from my local bookstore Changing Hands. I read the back and knew I would love it and I was right. I am a huge fan of horror movies and Gina references many of them in this book. I had just ended a Gothic literature course and reading non fictional essays was the perfect breath of fresh air I needed. The way Gina ties in the themes of horror into personal experiences with mental illness, grief, and existentialism is just captivating. I am so glad I own a copy of this book because I will treasure it forever and reread it many times to come.

[Ellie Stokes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowowow – I am blown away. I've been searching for a book that captures all my interests and different perspectives especially surrounding horror, trauma, death, relationships and all their idiosyncrasies and this is the one. I am such a horror fan and the way Gina compares her own personal experiences to those from horror and sci-fi films is so incredibly poetic and really strikes me down to the core. The end of the book sent chills down my spine and made me feel like I needed to express my care toward friends and family members I love and haven't been in contact with in awhile, and to take every moment in. Highly suggest this book!

[Samantha M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more prose, less essay. The author has skill in weaving life experience into common horror tropes, but this reads more of a very rough draft. Maybe that is the intention? The whole thing falls short with its stringing along of paragraphs as if editing was entirely backburnered. As a person who got each oneof her horror movie references, I still wanted to see more connections between the dots.

[Sof · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish the entire thing were as striking and potent as its best parts. I love meandering, spiraling essays and creative nonfiction that doesn’t force itself to “go” anywhere concrete or resolute, but honestly this felt more half-baked/rough-draft-y than deliberately fluid. There was way too much filler, and the gut-punch moments were almost always tucked between what felt like redundant or just lackluster pieces/incomplete ideas. But the good parts were excellent, and compelling.

[Drew Praskovich · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like horror films and are emo, this is for you. I am both of these things, so it made this accessible. The references to films aren’t direct and obvious, Nutt sort of glides in and out of famous scenes/moments/films and relates them to flashes of her life.

I like what’s happening but it’s a bit aimless. If it was any longer it would be like… Gina… please.

But a good spooky nonfiction read which we don’t have enough of.

[Kevin Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty cool. It's considered a book of essays although it's really just a bunch of short paragraphs/stream of conscious thoughts that are all vaguely tied together. Lots of interesting things here to think about but reading a book like this can be exhausting. Fear, death and loathing all tied together with horror movies.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can appreciate the prose and the quality of the writing, there is no doubt Nutt has skill. I think it was just too experimental for me. I wanted more of the references to horror tropes and maybe less personal reflection. I went into the book expecting something different and that is no fault of the author though.

[isabella · Rating 2 out of 5]

okay listen. i liked her writing style; she did a good job making things seem eerie when they are not. but truth be told, i really didnt care much for her just talking about her experiences. like i thought the death, grief, suicide passages were really cool, but her talking about like eating fried chicken or her doing ballet i couldnt seem to care for.

[Lyndsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal essays that weave horror movie tropes throughout. As someone who loves a collection of feminist personal essays, the added layer of morbidity and horror themes drew me to it even more. As with most essay collections, some sections are better than others. I found myself wishing some of the essays were longer. I recommend!