Tantrum

De: Rachel Eve Moulton

Narrado por: Rachel L. Jacobs

In this electric horror novel from the author of The Insatiable Volt Sisters, an exhausted mother thinks her newborn might be a monster. She’s right.

Thea’s third pregnancy was her easiest. She wasn’t consumed with anxiety about the baby. She wasn’t convinced it was going to be born green, or have a third eye, or have tentacles sprouting from its torso. Thea was fine. Her baby would be fine.

But when the nurses handed Lucia to her, Thea just knew. Her baby girl was a monster. Not only was Lucia born with a full set of teeth and a devilish glint in her eye, but she’s always hungry. Indiscriminately so. One day Lucia pointed at her baby brother, looked Thea dead in the eye and said, “I eat.”

Thea doesn’t know whether to be terrified or proud of her rapacious baby girl. And as Lucia starts growing faster and talking more, dark memories bubble to the surface--flashes from Thea’s childhood that won’t release their hooks from her heart. Lucia wants to eat the world. Thea might just let her.

Crackling with originality and dark humor, Rachel Eve Moulton’s Tantrum is a provocative exploration of familial debt, duty, and the darker side of motherhood.

Creepy but satisfying

For any kindred souls suffering from the effects of exquisitely painful parenting, here’s a book for you. If your wounds are fresh, trigger warning. However if you’ve just about had it being the “damaged” one in a relationship, with being uncomfortable with peers because you’re different or fearful that your crappy childhood will make you a less than perfect parent, I encourage you to give this book a read. It’s a short but satisfyingly shocking book about a young mother pushed to the brink by the birth of her own little girl. I loved this woman, with her fierce determination and willingness to take action to heal herself. What a fabulous heroine!

Moulton and her “magnificent monsters”

Tantrum is a first person point of view delve into the mind of a mother, who cannot connect with the people around her or feel secure in her own skin. Her dark mother humor was so relatable, her love for her family tainted by fears and judgments extremely self aware and honest.

I found as the book reached its climax, some of the internal dialogue briefly lost my attention, but I was pulled right back in for an ending well worth the listen.

The closer horror gets to our experienced reality, the more terrifying it becomes. In the likeness of Toni Morrison, this book finds itself in the genre of truth telling horror that lifts the veil of cultural blindness toward women, children (any undervalued group) and shows us the monstrousness of human violence— the trauma teeth it creates.

Worth the suspension of disbelief

This was a very pleasant surprise (not my typical genre). Not quite sure what to expect on this one, but my interest was piqued about the female hero versus villain discussion. Of course the metaphors are plentiful, but I think my favorite is just that there’s a bit of a monster inside all of us that comes out when you don’t resolve your shit. There were also a couple of parts that made me literally laugh out loud. A very enjoyable read.