Invaginies, Joe Koch, CLASH Books, 2024
The author’s bio says “Joe Koch (he/they) writes literary horror and surrealist trash,” and that seems accurate. (Keeping in mind that “trash” isn’t always pejorative.) The stories in Invaginies remind me sometimes of Lautréamont, sometimes of Kenneth Patchen*, sometimes of nobody else. I’ve read some of them before, in anthologies such as Antifa Splatterpunk, Your Body Is Not Your Body and The Book of Queer Saints. The first story, “Bride of the White Rat,” is relatively straightforward in its twisted way. The last, “The Wing of Circumcision Hands,” defies linear understanding. Koch uses body horror and sometimes irrational but always vivid imagery to maximum effect, and his prose is fantastic in both senses of the word. Just about every page has phrases that will drive you mad if you linger on them too long. My favorite horror read of the year so far.
* Kenneth Patchen of the novel Sleepers Awake. Patchen’s The Journal of Albion Moonlight is more well-known, but in my opinion inferior.