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We Are All Completely Fine

books

23rd January 2015

"We Are All Completely Fine"
By: Daryl Gregory

This is an incredibly good novella – it's only 182 pages long – about a support group for people who have had extremely traumatic (and usually supernatural) events in their lives. The events in the characters lives before the book do seem to be along the lines of horror stereotypes, for example the eldest group member had been kidnapped with a group of his friends in the 1970s by a family that lived in the middle of nowhere – who slowly eat him and his friends limb by limb until he was the only one still alive when the police finally rescued him an unknown time period later.

Another member seemed to be in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer mode, (and to a lesser extent shows like Supernatural), in that he had been a teenage boy who fought monsters in his hometown and now in his thirties has been sent to therapy in order to keep on getting the sleeping pills he wants. Another was a woman who had passed through his hometown as a college student and had been attacked by one of the monsters there before being saved in the nick of time. And so on for another two group members.

It is very well written and a very good read – I highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy horror books/TV/movies. I don't think it would have worked well as a full length novel, though I do think he could have gotten away with another 40-50 pages. There is something of a cliff hanger ending – it's more of an ending that does make it clear that the author is, at least intending, to write more stories involving the same characters that continue on from this books. Combined with the fact that events in this book haven't quite been tied up nicely enough at the end.