A Review of Rebecca Cuthbert’s Self-Made Monsters
By Lori D’Angelo
A hybrid collection of poetry and short stories, Rebecca Cuthbert’s Self-Made Monsters fittingly considers the many ways in which women occupy dark and monstrous spaces. Often speculative in nature, Cuthbert’s poetry exists in conversation with writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Christina Rosetti—particularly in terms of its formal style and dark imagery. The short fiction in the collection ranges from cosmic horror such as “The Reservoir”—a micro fiction piece which centers a watery grave containing mysterious evils—to longer queer body horror like “Falling to Pieces”—a story in which the main character, Christine, literally struggles to keep her crumbling body and herself together. Holding these pieces together are other works, such as “Makeover,” in which a renowned Body Sculptor, Pamela, turns her patients into grotesque masterpieces. Pamela’s uncertified apprentice, Janine, reflects on her boss’s alarming creations: “That’s what all Pamela’s clients wanted, anyway—not to fade into the background.” To be sure, Self-Made Monsters similarly refuses to fade into the background as Cuthbert invites readers to confront the darker parts of humanity—and perhaps the dark parts of themselves as well.
Self-Made Monsters similarly refuses to fade into the background as Cuthbert invites readers to confront the darker parts of humanity—and perhaps the dark parts of themselves as well.
Situated firmly in the tradition of feminist horror, Cuthbert’s collection features female protagonists who transcend the often-problematic victim trope. Instead, these characters fight back after being wronged, engaging in acts of revenge and breaking away from dated, constraining archetypes. In “The Vultures Remain,” for example, the unnamed narrator’s rage transcends any victimization that might have arisen after the death of her mother and the absence of her sister. Rather, Cuthbert allows such rage to flourish, as the narrator lashes out at the church ladies who play a prominent role in the short story. Cuthbert, too, is adept at crafting imagery that parallels and adds to each narrative’s more thematic concerns. “The Vultures Remain” features birds that hover, like omens, near a family drowning in sorrow. By the story’s end, “The porch is empty” and “The dented cars are gone,” but the vultures remain—staying even after the protagonist has lashed out against unwanted sympathy, and the church ladies have gone. Rather effectively, Cuthbert allows readers to feel the narrator’s loneliness, as well as the darkness literally hanging out above the woman’s head.
Situated firmly in the tradition of feminist horror, Cuthbert’s collection features female protagonists who transcend the often-problematic victim trope […] breaking away from dated, constraining archetypes.
Just as Cuthbert subverts the victim trope, so too do many of these stories’ villains push back against typical characterizations. In truth, many of Cuthbert’s “villains” aren’t truly vicious, but are merely neglectful. In “With Her,” a short story that takes place on Halloween, sisters Sarah and Caitlyn illustrate Cuthbert’s penchant for blurring the lines between “good” and “bad.” Sarah, the younger sister of the two—who is notably wearing a super hero costume, in a nod to her status as the “good guy”—just wants to go trick-or-treating and return safely home. But Caitlyn, serving as a foil to Sarah’s innocence, has other plans for the night. The character ultimately shirks her babysitting duties, leaves her sister with a stranger so that she can meet up with friends, and fails to grasp the potentially catastrophic results of her selfish actions. And yet, however villainous Caitlyn’s actions come across, Cuthbert seemingly reminds us that villainous behavior is often not intentional but rather circumstantial—and something that anyone has the danger of falling into.
Other pieces deal with the desperate and tragic lengths that outsiders will go to in order to find belonging. In “Dare You,” for instance, Jade is a junior high student who is new to town and eager to fit in. However, a potential friend group forces Jade to “prove herself” before they’ll even consider accepting her. And so, at a decaying house on the outskirts of town, Jade accepts a dangerous dare solely because she desperately wants to have friends. “In Crowd” similarly centers Marge, a faculty wife at Seattle U., who deeply feels her outsider status. In her search to combat loneliness she reluctantly agrees to attend an elaborate New Year’s Masquerade to ring in 1960. In the end, the ritualistic party—in which Marge becomes a willing participant—contains traces of Rosemary’s Baby and Eyes Wide Shut.
The influence of Cuthbert’s earlier work, too, is evident throughout the collection. In many ways, Self-Made Monsters builds on the thematic concerns tackled by Cuthbert in In Memory of Exoskeletons—a chapbook that, like this collection, contains pieces about grief and loss. However, this collection does much more than sit with humanity’s darkness. In the end, readers are left with a sense of unease, haunted by the collection’s antiheros who revel in a world that often appears more dark than light. But, in a somewhat paradoxical way, Cuthbert’s collection also acts as a kind of light, inviting readers to look at the many ways that women exist in the world, illuminating the multitude of ways that woman can exist in such darkness.
Self-Made Monsters is now available from Alien Buddha Press.
Lori D’Angelo is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a fellow at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, and an alumna of the Community of Writers. She holds an MA from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and an MFA from West Virginia University. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including BULL, Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, Moon City Review, and Rejection Letters. Her first book, a short story collection called The Monsters Are Here, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions.