Violence, Facts, Repeat

Rating 2/5

Keeping to my spooky tradition I’ve chosen to base this month’s post on Eric LaRocca’s recent release, We Are Always Tender With Our Dead (2025), book one of their new trilogy. If you haven’t heard of LaRocca’s work, it can be described as transgressive horror. And when I mean ‘transgressive’ I mean very twisted and extreme so for those faint of heart be wary if you consider delving into LaRocca’s world.

Much like LaRocca’s story collections, We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is brutally horrific. However, it is a fairytale afflicted by repetitive writing and a ‘tell you all’ narrative that undermines its themes.

We Are Always Tender With Our Dead takes place in the isolated town of Burnt Sparrow, where, on Christmas morning, a massacre occurs, committed by three faceless (literally) people. Asides from witnessing the town’s peculiar coping strategies and the sadistic consequences the killers endure, the story also follows Rupert Cromwell, a young boy who seeks affection from his grieving father and is forced to confront the harsh realities of life and death.

Yes. This is not an easy horror to read. And I mean that both as a reader and writer.

While I have enjoyed reading the last three LaRocca books I own, I do feel We Are Always Tender With Our Dead isn’t a great start to this planned trilogy.

We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is a feverishly macabre fairytale. Incorporating various writing formats like news articles, diary entries etc, readers get a sense of the mystery behind the town, Burnt Sparrow.  Everything within its pages plays out like a collection of the records of the Town’s history. It was an approach I liked. However, when it came to conveying the story through its two main narrators; Rupert Cromwell and Gladys Esherwood, its structure was hindered by LaRocca’s overabundance of telling rather than demonstrating and the repetition of descriptions. This also effected its themes. Normally LaRocca bases their stories around an emotional theme like grief, anger etc. The theme in this book was very muddled and hard to pin down. Their description of the book’s most horrific moments of humanity and depravity were certainly highlighted. However, I don’t feel these scenes were enough to shield the story’s flaws. I do wonder if LaRocca’s intention was to convey the story as a construct of some madman’s dream. Considering its conclusion it’s possible. However, it’s hard to say.

If you are interested in LaRocca’s work, I suggest trying their novella At Dark, I Become Loathsome (2025) or their collection, The Trees Grew Because I Bled There (2021). We Are Always Tender With Our Dead may be too experimental for any horror fans. It has the sadistically dark LaRocca touch but it needs to learn to be more expressive with its non-horror elements as well.