Zee Carlstrom’s debut novel, Make Sure You Die Screaming, is a blistering, unfiltered fever dream of queerness, grief, and rebellion. Reading it feels like getting into a stolen car with a stranger who smells like regret and gasoline—and then realizing halfway through the ride that they might be your only shot at truth. Equal parts mystery, satire, and social manifesto, this novel defies easy genre classification, but its voice is unmistakably urgent.
In the vein of books like Detransition, Baby and Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Carlstrom dismantles expectations around identity, family, and the American ideal. But where those novels simmer with introspection, Make Sure You Die Screaming explodes. Loud, messy, brilliant—this is not a story that whispers. It howls.
Story Summary: Finding a Father, Losing Your Mind
The novel opens on the cracked edge of a mental and emotional collapse. Our narrator—recently untethered from gender, career, sobriety, and sanity—is running from Chicago to Arkansas in a stolen BMW to find their vanished father. The father, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, has gone missing, and the narrator’s mother is desperate. But this isn’t a detective story—it’s a self-interrogation wrapped in motel sheets, littered with Q pills, and haunted by the ghost of a best friend named Jenny.
Along for the ride is Yivi, a tall, terrifying, magnetic goth on the run from a shadowy figure known as Big Gravy. The two form an uneasy alliance—equal parts friendship, trauma bond, and mutual self-destruction—as they traverse America’s heartland. What they find is less about the missing father and more about everything that got lost before he even disappeared.
Character Deep Dive: An Unnamed Narrator on the Edge
Carlstrom’s choice to keep the narrator unnamed post-gender collapse is powerful—it strips identity down to voice and experience. This narrator is sharp-tongued, deeply wounded, and painfully self-aware. They are:
Blisteringly intelligent, yet incapable of self-preservation.
Hilarious, even while unraveling.
Dangerous, both to themselves and others.
The tension between their radical honesty and compulsive self-destruction creates a character you want to protect—even when they seem intent on burning everything down. Their vulnerability, especially in moments of memory with Jenny or encounters with their MAGA father, hits like a punch to the chest.
Yivi, on the other hand, is a whirlwind. Dressed like a cartoon villain and wielding a hunting knife with a wink, she’s comic relief with a tragic past. Yet she’s also the novel’s emotional center—a reminder that friendship, however dysfunctional, might still save you.
Thematic Exploration: What the Screaming’s Really About
1. Queer Rage and the Death of Politeness
Carlstrom doesn’t sand down the narrator’s anger. Instead, they present it in full: gender dysphoria, familial betrayal, and societal gaslighting simmering in every page. The refusal to conform isn’t just personal—it’s political.
2. Addiction as Escape and Punishment
The narrator’s substance abuse isn’t glamorized. It’s survival. Their self-medication with warm beer, stolen liquor, and mystery pills reads less like indulgence and more like anesthesia for a bleeding mind.
3. Capitalism’s Emotional Toll
A former corporate climber, the narrator reflects on the soul-rot of productivity culture and wealth worship. The novel suggests that burnout isn’t a symptom—it’s the system functioning as designed.
4. Family as Fallout
The central mystery—what happened to the narrator’s father—is less a whodunit and more a meditation on intergenerational trauma. What if the people who raised you were never well to begin with? And what if you inherited all their worst tendencies?
5. The End of the World, Personally
In one sense, this is a post-apocalyptic story. Not in the global sense, but in the personal. The narrator’s life has already ended. What remains is just motion—forward, always forward—toward something they don’t fully believe exists: redemption.
Carlstrom’s Style: Part Monologue, Part Manifesto
The prose of Make Sure You Die Screaming is a living thing—angry, exhausted, and weirdly elegant. Zee Carlstrom writes like someone with nothing left to lose. The voice is a blend of:
Poetic nihilism: “The truth will not set you free. It will bash your skull in with a baseball bat, then set you free.”
Dark comedy: The dialogue crackles with gallows humor. Every page feels like someone is laughing through a panic attack.
Cultural excavation: Carlstrom slips in critiques of consumerism, political delusion, and gender performance with a scalpel.
While the style is daring and effective, it may be challenging for some readers. The narrator’s unfiltered stream of consciousness occasionally overpowers the story’s forward momentum, especially during the denser monologues.
Highlights Worth Screaming About
A uniquely queer anti-hero: Unlike anything in recent fiction, this narrator is unforgettable.
Sharp social commentary: The novel spares no institution—capitalism, patriarchy, tech culture, or the nuclear family.
Yivi: A standout character whose blend of chaos and care adds vital texture.
Moments of piercing clarity: Amid the chaos, Carlstrom delivers gut-wrenching emotional truths—often when you least expect them.
Points That Falter
Structural looseness: At times, the plot drifts, particularly in the middle third. The lack of narrative anchor may frustrate some readers looking for resolution.
Intensity overload: The relentless pacing, trauma stacking, and philosophical tangents can exhaust more casual readers.
Emotional withholding: Key emotional reveals come late, and some characters (like Jenny) feel underexplored, despite their importance.
Literary Kin and Context
Zee Carlstrom’s debut sits comfortably among recent experimental queer fiction. Readers who admired:
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
The Sluts by Dennis Cooper
…will find thematic resonance here, though Carlstrom’s work is notably more acidic and politically volatile.
This novel also echoes the outsider rage of Fight Club, albeit queer and post-capitalist, and carries the interpersonal devastation of A Little Life but told through a cracked windshield and haze of Miller Lite.
Carlstrom has not published previous books, but if this debut is any indication, they are a force to watch.
Verdict: Screaming Is the Point
Make Sure You Die Screaming isn’t just a title—it’s a thesis. Carlstrom writes a world where people who live outside the binary, outside the norms, outside the system are expected to suffer quietly. This book rejects that silence. It screams, not for sympathy, but for visibility.
The narrator doesn’t come out of their journey clean or whole or even safe. But maybe survival, in its messiest, most unapologetic form, is the only resolution that matters.