#BookReview-‘I Am Not Your Final Girl’ by Claire C Holland

I am a HUGE fan of horror but as with anything else, it is easy to get stuck in a rut which is where I turn to you,the book bloggers and book buying community for my next recommendation.

This one comes courtesy of a recommendation via  Ladies of Horror Fiction

I would genuinely urge you to find and follow them on Twitter and Instagram as their horror recs are off the chart!

Thanks to them I have become reaquainted with some old friends and also made some new ones, such as the following….

About the book…

From Claire C. Holland,‘I Am Not Your Final Girl’ is a timely collection of poetry that follows the final girl of slasher cinema – the girl who survives until the end – on a journey of retribution and reclamation. From the white picket fences of 1970s Haddonfield to the apocalyptic end of the world, Holland confronts the role of women in relation to subjects including feminism, violence, motherhood, sexuality, and assault in the world of Trump and the #MeToo movement. Each poem centers on a fictional character from horror cinema, and explores the many ways in which women find empowerment through their own perceived monstrousness.

What can I say?

I absolutely devoured this debut collection and I suspect I am not alone in feeling validated and strengthened by reading it.

The unsatisfying treatmemt of women in horror films and stories is undergoing a tranformation and this is metamorphic transfotmation which is fully in evidence threaded through each and every poem.

Take, for example, the following poem-

Jess, from ‘Black Christmas'(1974)

‘I am the woman who goes back into the house because I can’t stand waiting on the lawn.

Pick up this steel rod,clench it in both fists,ignore your please to stay.I can’t be preserved

in this expectant state,a butterfly in a jar to make you smile when you look. A creature

made docile with friction .

I can’t exist in a way that comforts you.’

When nailed to the earth, or restrained, Claire gives these women wings.

Cut and mutilated? She stitches them together strengthened by the scar tissue .

She sees the truth about women’s life and bodily agency as the root of men’s fear and gives it back to them kicking and screaming.

She breathes life into stale tropes and tired representation and gives us the heroines we need and deserve.

Her words sink under your skin and linger as do the umistakable voices that begin as whisper in your ear and rise to a battlecry.

Hugely recommended for feminist readers, horror lovers and poetry enthusiasts, this is one splendid collection!

About the author…

Claire C. Holland is a poet and writer from Philadelphia, currently living in Los Angeles. She has been a freelance writer for more than ten years.

When she’s not writing, Claire can usually be found reading or binge-watching horror movies with her husband, Corey, and Wheaten Terrier, Chief Brody.

She is also a feminist, a tattoo collector, and interested in all forms of art strange and subversive.

Links-https://www.clairecholland.com/

Twitter @ClaireCWrites

@LOHFiction