Review: Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana (Spoiler-Alert)

Scarring in a much different way than I expected it to be.

I've heard that Gone to See the River Man is deeply fucked up, but I thought that was because Kristopher Triana is considered a splatterpunk author. I was ready for body horror on body horror and we got a few deeply gruesome scenes, but I realize now that the aversion people have to this book is not from the gore. It's from the brother sister rape scenes. Which yes, were incredibly disturbing, especially with the added context of the story, but luckily (or unluckily?) for myself, I just watched Oldboy for the first (and second) time and the FATHER DAUGHTER sex scene (yes, it's not rape, they don't know they're related when it happens) in that has scarred me deeper than any other incest plotline possibly could. And that movie has a brother sister sex scene too 😭 why is this the media I consume. So in a way, I was less shaken by this one, but now typing it out and remembering the brother's slow decline into anorexia and depression and death is making me realize this is probably equally as fucked as Oldboy.

I was surprised by how cohesive the themes were of Lori desperately seeking love and finding it in all the wrong places. I didn't expect a novella of this genre to really have a throughline, so that was a pleasant surprise. And I think Abby's backstory was cleverly woven to produce the perfect amount of intrigue and suspense because the reader is never sure of what she truly knows or if she's being fed memories by something supernatural.

I enjoyed this more than I expected to, and I see why it's making its rounds across the horror world.