To Heal Through Pain, to Live Through Death
Eric LaRocca – At Dark I Become Loathsome
Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu
The feel-good book of the year is out now! In Eric LaRocca’s new novel, readers will find a little bit of everything to warm the soul. A loving father and husband has made it his mission to bring the value of life into the hearts of people struggling with their inner demons, while also asking himself some important questions about his own place in life, and what he’s really meant to do. This beautiful tale brings up themes of mortality and morality in the forms of the protagonist’s half-glimpsed ghosts of his late wife and missing (and presumably) dead son, his own increasingly frightful facial enhancements, and oh yes—suicidal people being buried alive…
In all seriousness, At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a gruesome and unflinching tale of grief, trauma, death, and in the midst of it all, the search for inner peace. Ashley Lutin’s narrative is rife with self-loathing and inner exile. Not long after his wife Pema had succumbed to cancer, his eight-year-old son Bailey went missing, and in the months and soon years that followed, Ashley retreated into absolute darkness, meditating on his losses and pursuing unhealthy avenues of grief, eventually taking to piercing up and decorating his face—including implanting metal horns on his forehead and his altering his ears altered to elf-like points. But within these shadows, Ashley has found a new goal, a new mission, a new purpose: to help others struggling to exist to find a new value in living. And to do so, he has created a business for himself, in which such desperate people contact him online to seek his help in cleansing them of their yearning for death…by burying them alive, for a time, and releasing them into a new, reincarnated life.
The cover synopsis is a little misleading (and spoiling) as to what occurs in this book. While this tale does involve Ashley’s correspondence with someone by the username “masterjinx76” (identified as Jinx on the cover), including the revelation of masterjinx76’s terrible, tragic story, the plot does not outwardly follow their interactions à la other works by LaRocca such as Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. This is Ashley’s tale, through and through—and although the correspondence from masterjinx76 has a powerful effect on him and his overall trajectory, this journey is wholly his own.
Throughout the novel, Ashley intones the loathsomeness that he becomes at dark. While this admission may at first come across as a little repetitive, what it really does is serve as Ashley’s nocturnal mask, primarily to justify his mindset and actions. And while for him it feels like he is becoming his own in his mission, that he’s in his true element, in many ways, it seems to serve more as his way of hiding from the shames and traumas of his life. Time and again, he tells the reader that at dark, he becomes loathsome—but if anything, he’s really telling this to himself, for himself, because as his narrative unfolds, his vulnerable humanity is on constant display.
Although the heart of this novel is denser than a black hole, it is still very much a heart. As Ashley gently holds the reader’s hand, leading us staggering and stumbling and crawling along his journey through nihil’s maw, Eric LaRocca’s unrivaled skills at presenting beauty in decay are on full display in this unforgettable tale, carrying throughout it echoes of love, kindness—and even in its bleakest moments…hope.
