Negative Space

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I wish I could give this an even higher rating than 5/5, something that transcends the confines of this rating system to match the theme of this unbelievable novel. I wasn’t there but I can see it in my mind. I know what it was like. I know it like a dream. In that way, it’s still happening, and always will be.” Echoing, contradicting prose like this haunts every crevice of B.R. Yeager’s 2020 horror novel Negative Space. Published on March 1st, 2020, the epidemic of teen suicides in the small fictional town of Kinsfield, New Hampshire directly mirrors the pandemic in which the real world would soon find itself. Negative Space blurs the lines between different realities and timelines. Through the daze of a new illicit hallucinogen, cryptic 4chan posts, and the general musings of chronically online teenagers, memories transcend the traditional boundaries of bodies to a shared identity amongst the residents of Kinsfield, NH. It was different for each three. Amygdalatropolis, the structure emerged really naturally. With Negative Space I knew from the beginning that was going to be those three rotating narratives and they had to be first person. Then, with Pearl Death, that felt very free. I was working on that on the side and I didn’t have to worry too much about a lot of formal aspects because the form felt very intentional from the very beginning. There wasn’t really any room or any need to deviate from the structure as it was already apparent. Negative Space is one of the truly great, smart horror novels I’ve had the pleasure to read in my thirty-nine laps around the sun. It was both an emotional journey and a skin-crawling experience. It shows obvious influence from Blake Butler’s monolith 300 000 000, but it is also indebted to Clive Barker and H.P Lovecraft. This novel will make your feel ugly and vulnerable in the best possible way, like someone stared into your soul and looked at every little imperfection.

B.R:I think you’re pretty close. Out of the three narrators, she has the most distance from Tyler and the phenomena he’s wrapped up in, so her perspective is the closest we have to an objective account (which still is still far from objective—every narrator is unreliable). I think the crucial part is that she, unlike Ahmir or Jill, isn’t chasing after Tyler’s affection, which provides her with a unique perspective, one that may be akin to a narrator or historian. Negative Space tells the story of three teenagers living in the fictional town of Kinsfield, New Hampshire: Jill, Lu and Ahmir. Something is happening and it might very well be the end of the world: their classmates are killing themselves, animals hurl themselves at cars on the highway, acts of random violence go barely noticed, their common friend Tyler might be communicating with higher beings. All our three narrators want is to survive whatever’s coming for them. B.R Yeager’s Virus of Life B.R Yeager’s Negative Space was released on this unsuspecting planet on March 1st 2020 by a little known Philadelphia based publisher called Apocalypse Party. Thirteen days before everything went to shit. It has become the talk of the town since, but I believe this conceptual horror novel is not done colonizing our collective consciousness. This is one of the best novels I’ve read in 2021 and toxoplasmosis for the soul. I mean that in the most complimentary way. Yet what makes Negative Space truly unique is Yeager’s unsentimental and refreshingly modern treatment of queerness and gender identity, which is seamlessly folded into the narrative without devolving into patronising tokenism. Yeager’s depiction of Lu, an alienated trans-woman living under the conservative rule of her parents, attests to this, in that she never outwardly declares or dramatically explains her gender identity to the reader. Rather, her identity is inferred only through the dissonances between the three separate narrators. Ahmir, as well as other peripheral characters, call her ‘Lou’ and refer to her in masculine pronouns; while Lu calls herself ‘Lu’ and uses feminine pronouns, which Jill also employs. Indeed, this device is utilised so subtly that it wasn’t until I was mid-way through the book that I made the connection, which surprised me without obstructing the narrative flow or feeling like a blatantly artificial construction. Lu’s queerness, in other words, feels both natural and unforced within the confines of the story, which is a testament to Yeager’s skill as a writer.

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The last book I read was Frisk by Dennis Cooper and when I got through it I was like, “Whew.” What are some things you’ve read that have really afflicted you, that you would recommend?I don't think I will be sleeping soundly tonight. Make way for the new generation - B.R. Yeager is at the frontlines, and hopefully, if I can muster the talent and courage to make my voice and the voice of the people with less privilege and similar anxieties to me heard, I'll be right there with him. We go exploring with three main characters – Ahmir, Jill and Lu (who is sometimes Lou, sometimes a he or a she – and nothing about is explained, and neither it should be explained). They barrage the reader with their reality at the intensity of a cover bombing. The trio goes to the same school and is bound with the fourth character – Tyler. Jill and Tyler Ahmir and Tyler are friends, Jill dates Tyler, despite her parents’ displeasure, and Lu is forced to know Tyler because her other two friends know him. While this tactic undoubtably enhances the realism of the book – which is semi-modernist in its splintered, stream-of-consciousness style of prose – it also reinforces the precarious status of the reader, in the sense that nothing is directly or neatly given to us. There are no clear answers in Yeager’s novel, only hints and clues encrypted within each of the character’s narrations which, on careful reading, give way to a less opaque picture of the world of Negative Space. And yet, just as we start to become familiarised with the characters and setting, the book’s horror almost immediately intensifies, thereby causing whatever comforting awareness we have of the narrative to warp and shatter. Realism, in this sense, is used only to lure us further into the seemingly ‘unreal’ depths of the unknown. I don't think I've ever read anything that SO accurately expressed my inner mental state all the time? This book feels like it was pulled straight from my own brain.

B.R:Probably not—that would likely take me further away from the writing I want to do. Also, most contractual work seems to be in the realm of criticism and essay, which aren’t my strong points. I understand why full-time writing appeals to some people, and they get into it because they enjoy and excel at those formats. That’s just not the case for me. Ben:Do you WANT to write full-time even if it involves doing contractual work, ghostwriting or other less glamorous propositions? B.R:So here’s the exception! I’m extremely interested in writing for games—it’s a medium I’ve always been fascinated by—even though working in the games industry often sounds like a nightmare. There’s also very little demand specifically for writers, or at least there’s much more supply than there is demand. But if a studio was interested in having me write barks or item descriptions for them, I’d be down.A confusing aspect of the book for me - was Lu transgender or non-binary? Others frequently referred to Lu as “she” or “her” but when Lu actively participated in the ritual they masturbated with their penis. This nightmarish zone made accessible by WHORL remains ominously ambiguous throughout Negative Space, and its influence on the town is left spookily undefined: is it the cause of the decades-long suicide epidemic in Kinsfield? Is someone using these indeterminate entities as a means of exacting revenge? Or, is this realm a hellish form of purgatory, a spectral catchment full of wandering souls once belonging to the suicidal townsfolk? While the story obliquely gestures to each of these interpretations in kind, with particular attention being paid to whether Tyler is the conjurer or conduit of these unspeakable forces, the real strength of the novel is its refusal to settle on any one answer, instead harnessing vagueness and obscurity as a fertile source of dread and terror.