This is a spoiler-free review! This book contains detailed descriptions of disordered eating, depression, and dissociation.
Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, take off to Minnesota for the sugar beet harvest, with Elise hoping that the money she earns from the harvest will hold off the never-ending bills and rent payments that come with living in Brooklyn. As she and Tom arrive to the harvest, strange occurrences haunt her journey and Elise begins to question the things she is seeing, hearing, and even herself. From strange and threatening text messages to the slow disappearance of her fellow harvesters, her trip to earn a paycheck quickly transforms into something much more sinister.
When Tom begins to form a close friendship with another sugar beet harvester, Elise becomes consumed with their relationship, sending her backwards into a spiral of depression, relapsing in her eating disorder, and questioning everything around her. With each passing day, Elise's paranoia takes a new turn, and her dissociation dives deeper as the sugar beet harvest calls to her in a way she never expected. The consumption industry's dark side takes root in Elise, and the sugar beets call to her, luring her further into their world of growth and destruction just as Elise is falling apart.
Sarsfield creates such a unique premise with this novel - both horror and caution, Beta Vulgaris takes a jarring turn as Elise and Tom's seemingly mundane journey is suddenly filled with vanishing coworkers and the allure of the beet pile. Even prior to arriving to the harvest location, the author pulls the readers into unknown territory along with her main characters, leaving us just as lost as they are. Unprepared for the drastic turns their story will take, Tom and Elise's relationship begins to fall to shambles the longer they become one with the beets. As they dig deeper to harvest, they are thrust deeper into madness.
To read about a main character that truly seems to have no appreciation for herself and just has genuine distaste for how her life is going is something I have not come across. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh is the closest I can think of, but even that lead did not harbor dislike towards herself, but rather the idea of doing tasks and living every single day. Elise is so focused on just getting to payday that she neglects herself and instead places sole focus on why Tom is drawn to another harvester, Cee. She is consumed by anxiety and obsession with this development, and in turn is thrown back into her own past self-destruction. Every internal thought that consumed Elise's mind was boggling, and while I could not relate to her struggles, witnessing her thought processes felt like I was living them.
The entire concept of the sugar beets luring the harvesters into the beet pile was incredibly surreal and I felt as though I was slowly descending into madness as the beets called to the characters like sirens to sailors. Sarsfield's ability to turn these inanimate objects into things of power and persuasion illustrates her capabilities to entrance not only her characters, but the readers as well. I was left questioning the story as a whole, mostly because I felt as though I was sent through the looking glass and experienced an entirely different dimension.
For fans of Bunny by Mona Awad, Sarsfield's debut novel takes you on a journey of transformation, uncertainty, and the horrors of consumption. Literary fiction and horror intertwine in this consuming tale of self-destruction and fall into madness - I highly recommend picking this up if you are looking for something completely out of your element and willing to be thrown into Elise's compelling journey.
You can add Beta Vulgaris on Goodreads now, and follow the author to stay up to date on releases and publications.
No comments:
Post a Comment