Name: Megan Garfield's review of Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Item: Tell Me I'm Worthless
Rating: 4
Author: Megan Garfield

Alison Rumfitt

A dark, unflinching haunted house novel that takes readers from the well of the literary gothic, up through Brighton’s queer scene, and out into the heart of modern day trans experience in the UK.

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well. Alice is living a haunted existence, selling videos of herself cleaning for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. She hasn’t spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn’t seen Hannah either. 

Memories of that night torment her mind and her flesh, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, past the KEEP OUT sign, over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, she knows she must go. 

Together Alice and Ila must face the horrifying occurrences that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, who the House has chosen to make its own. 

Cutting, disruptive, and darkly funny, Tell Me I’m Worthless is a vital work of trans fiction that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors as it examines the devastating effects of trauma and the way fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other.

Tell Me I'm Worthless

Megan Garfield

Dani

okay first of all if you’re going to read this please check the content warnings. i’m serious. 

i have conflicted feelings about this. it’s not a book to be enjoyed. it’s pretty much a book to feel uncomfortable about. it was horror. it did its job. i’m not sure i would recommend it, but it was executed well. some aspects of it overdone, but overall, i think, it did what it set out to do. sorry. what the actual fuck actually

mic shulman

A scary book with really interesting characters balancing politics, personal nuance complex characters, and gruesome, explicit horror!

Patty Pforte

Fraser Simons

Very clever, unconventional in places—particularly a fine use of two column for fictional reasons—brutal, dark, modern interpretation of a haunted house story centering queer people. Alice, a trans woman, Ila, a cis lesbian (questioning, me thinks) went into a particular haunted house 3 years ago and emerged traumatized and with permanent, hateful scars related to their identities. 

The structure shows both characters living fairly ideologically opposed lives, clearly influenced by unresolved trauma; essentially haunted by the events. Then, as they converge, we get the perspectives of the house, various flashbacks interspersed, a convergence of past and present, and abstractions that culminate satisfyingly, and, finally, an epilogue. The structure is exceptional and functions well. 

The prose are contemporary genre fiction, have good flow, and are pretty clear. Functional but I think stylistically indistinct. It’s also a bit padded. Thematically, this worked quite well, though I think meanders too much in regards to aforementioned padding at the start. The meat and potatoes of this thing is in the back end, and it really picks up, pace wise. 

It’s a feat that it manages to navigate to the ending that it does. The metaphors and allegories are mostly clear and very novel to me. How it ties into intersections of fascism, who and how people are hurt by the interactions—what it says about western culture, I think works, and does it well. It’s an excellent debut. Not being a horror reader really, I can’t really speak to genre specific things. It feels subversive and compelling and completely new to me. 

It has a note at the start; a content warning situation, and that is warranted. There’s sexual assault and brutal damage to bodies and wildly harmful slurs in it. All of which is pertinent to the story being told. Do be in a headspace to handle the most brutal things done to queer identities and bodies, though.

Megan Garfield &
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

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Megan Garfield &Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

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Megan Garfield &
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt