Carlotta Moran, a young single mother with three children, suddenly has her life turned upside down when she begins to be attacked in her bed each night by a spectral entity. This brutal unseen force makes attempts on her life and terrorizes her children, but the worst part is that no one believes her. Among the skeptics is psychiatrist Dr. Sneidermann, who believes Carlotta is psychotic, a danger to herself and her children who should be committed. But two graduate students in parapsychology have a different theory: that Carlotta is being tormented by a powerful force from beyond our reality, outside space and time. The tension builds to an electrifying conclusion, and the truth may be far more frightening than any of them ever imagined …
Warnings: Rape/sexual assault, Graphic violence, Depictions of sexism, Gaslighting
Category: M/F
The Entity is a horror novel that was loosely based on documented real life haunting events in California. The novel was later made into a film of the same name, and is a haunted house story that delves into one woman’s experiences not only with violent visitations, but also with the people trying to help her.
WRITING
This story follows Carlotta, a single mother who begins to be visited by an invisible entity that attacks and sexually assaults her in brutal, violent ways. This is, obviously, going to be a story that not everyone will want to read, as it is of course rife with upsetting content. Carlotta first seeks help from her friend, then from a psychiatrist, and finally from paranormal researchers, all who attempt to find a way to explain the visitations and find a way to rid Carlotta of them. Its a very fast paced book full of action after action and some very violent moments, but it is ultimately a story about a woman who is a victim of abuse time and time again. It is told mainly from Carlotta’s perspective, though other POVs enter the narrative as well, and Carlotta’s experiences are the main focal point.
EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
This is a story entirely about one woman’s experiences with abuse, and as such it is a story that is monumentally emotional at its core. It is a piece of writing that is about how Carlotta is both assaulted but also gaslit about her own assault over and over and over again- to the point where I actually found not the scenes of assault to be the most harrowing to read, but the scenes of everyone she talks to about the assault dismissing her and telling her it isn’t real. This becomes the crux of the horror aspect to me, that no matter who Carlotta seeks help from, there is no help for her because she is not trusted to be believed about her own experiences. Dr. Sneidermann may come to feel a strong emotional attachment and responsibility for her but he ultimately does not believe that what she says happened happened, and that’s the aspect that makes this a bitterly relatable narrative for anyone who has been dismissed about things in their own lives.
WORLDBUILDING
The world of the supernatural is seen in this story through three lenses- through the lens of Carlotta’s first hand experiences, through the lens of Dr. Sneiderman’s mental health and psychiatry approach, and through the lens of the paranormal scientists who believe in the supernatural and want to measure it as something tangible. This was a very interesting way to break down the story, as Carlotta’s experiences are consistently taken for granted by the people investigating. The psychiatrist believes it is all in Carlotta’s head, while the researchers are more interesting in investigating and studying the phenomenon than they are with helping Carlotta. It becomes a fascinating ‘up to reader interpretation’ sort of situation as far as what the entity actually is, and I would have liked more concrete explanations, but that’s just my own preferred style of storytelling, and especially in a horror story where the primary draw is mystery, perhaps it works best to leave it this open ended.
STEAMINESS
The sexual content in this book is not really meant as titilation- it’s written incredibly violently, graphically, as upsetting and harrowing scenes of brutal sexual assault. Not to mince words, Carlotta is a rape victim, and the scenes of being assaulted by the invisible entity are often quite difficult to read. For that very reason however it is certainly effective as horror- the text really gives us Carlotta’s POV well during these scenes which are dripping with fear, pain, and the character’s sense of abject horror at what is being done to her. The narrative also explores a lot of Carlotta’s past relationships- it turns out that she has been in abusive relationships in the past, and the story explores sexual violence and abuse in a number of different contexts, both supernatural and mundane. This makes it both hard to read as well as wonderfully compelling as a piece of writing about women’s experiences.
A very trippy and very violent book, this story begs the question over and over of how we treat abuse survivors, and why women tend to avoid coming forward about the abuse they experience. It was a good read, one that kept my blood pumping, inspiring both fear and rage at the injustices of this woman’s experiences.
Have you read The Entity? Let me know what YOU thought by leaving me a comment!
Roses And Thorns 