Xavier Coates lives and handles maintenance at Leigh Pierce Estates, a low-rise apartment building. While the rent is affordable, its tenants are saddled with a neglectful property manager who\u2019s waiting to tear the place down\u2014he certainly doesn\u2019t care that some tenants have been disappearing lately. Xavier, however, has compassion for others, including an ailing girl he spots in the basement. He calls her an ambulance, but not before her blood apparently infects Xavier, who gets progressively sicker in the coming days. Meanwhile, Ari and his parents, Leena and Cyril, have been moving around the basement units. They\u2019re searching for ways to satisfy their hunger pangs, though what they\u2019re really feeding is some kind of parasite. It\u2019s the very thing that\u2019s affecting Xavier (he\u2019s seen signs of what\u2019s inside him) and just what Ari\u2019s family can help him with, but Xavier may not like how they get their food\u2014or what it is. Cox\u2019s endlessly unnerving story takes repeated shots at health care in America: Xavier gets a massive hospital bill despite being on his mother\u2019s insurance, and a medical professional looking into the parasites isn\u2019t especially concerned about Leigh Pierce or the low-income area it\u2019s in. Along with classism, the novel tackles themes of sexism and racism (several tenants, including Xavier, are Black). All the while, the author confidently delivers the genre goods, blending Cronenbergian body horror with a pervasive sense of doom. A touch of ambiguity (what exactly are those parasites?) heightens the suspense. The prose is richly textured\u2014the narrative has striking passages throughout, such as a description of \u201cmetal hitting the fallen log with a hollow ring. A sound like a skull splintering open. The bleeding ooze of wood pulp.\u201d <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Xavier Coates lives and handles maintenance at Leigh Pierce Estates, a low-rise apartment building. While the rent is affordable, its tenants are saddled with a neglectful property manager who\u2019s waiting to tear the place down\u2014he certainly doesn\u2019t care that some tenants have been disappearing lately. Xavier, however, has compassion for others, including an ailing girl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5871"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}