Disturbance

May 22, 2023
Poet Clake (The Museum of Ice Cream) makes her fiction debut with an eerie tale following an unnamed narrator who has recently left an abusive relationship. Alone in her new apartment, she listens in on her neighbors through the thin walls, especially Chelsea, the teenage girl next door who is dealing with her own boyfriend problems. With the help of her friend Jess, Chelsea turns to mystical ways of handling the breakup. While the narrator finds herself drawn further into Chelsea’s drama, she also comes to believe that her new apartment is haunted. Scratching, banging, and other sounds permeate the space, along with strange smells and figures in the shadows. As the narrator, too, turns to witchcraft and joins with the teenagers in their efforts, things spiral out of control. This witchy plot benefits from allusions to its pop culture antecedents, including The Craft, and Clake’s artful juxtaposition of the narrator’s memories of her past relationship with the haunting in the present sheds light on the lingering effects of trauma. Fans of literary horror will want to snatch this up.

January 12, 2024
In her debut novel, Clake offers a somber, supernatural twist to the standard post-breakup story. Her protagonist, an unnamed English woman, spends the summer recovering after finally leaving her abusive boyfriend. Uncertain of how to reconnect with the world, she takes an interest in Chelsea, the teenager next door. Chelsea, too, is struggling to make sense of a toxic relationship--but, unlike the narrator, she turns to witchcraft as her first solution. When the narrator sees the power Chelsea is able to tap into, she decides to experiment with it herself, hoping to banish her ex once and for all. Clake sets the stakes high, as the narrator struggles to tell the difference between the madness of isolation versus her occult reality. But the drama is never concluded so much as slowly dissolved into nothing. Although Clake handles the ambiguities of her narrator's psyche well, her story's supernatural elements give the impression of an underwhelming haunted house. Ultimately, though, Disturbance offers a dark, introspective take on women's fiction.

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