Creepy apartment exudes grim vibes in dreamy ‘mommy horror’ debut

With horror becoming one of the most popular and celebrated genres in literature and film, it continues to spawn an ever-growing list of subgenres. These offshoots into specific topics or themes have always been there, but with growing popularity they’re now recognizable by readers who aren’t necessarily genre diehards.

One subgenre on the rise is “mommy horror,” stories which examine the sometimes fraught and strained relationships between mothers and their children, or the distressing and gory experience of birth itself.

It is this subgenre that Vancouver-based Liverpudlian writer and editor Emma Cleary explores in her debut novel Afterbirth.

Twenty-something Brooke is struggling to find her place. After teaching English in Japan for a couple of years and a romance that ended very badly, she is forced to move back in with her parents in England.

But soon after her sister Isabelle, who lives in Vancouver, requires surgery, and Brooke ends up travelling to B.C. to help her sister convalesce.

Isabelle, or Izzy, needs a myomectomy to remove a uterine fibroid growth that is so big she appears pregnant. While isolated in an unfamiliar city, a situation quite similar to her time in Japan, Brooke dwells on her failed relationship with Cecelia, who was also visiting Japan as an English teacher.

Though Brooke does not like horror movies, they were a major way she and Cecelia bonded. It is through this lens that Brooke begins to interpret some of the odd events which begin to take place while she is alone in Izzy’s apartment.

Roving the halls of Izzy’s building is a filthy and mumbling old woman known only as Medusa, seemingly because of the look of her severely matted and unkempt hair. Many of the building’s other residents complain of small or inconsequential items going missing.

Brooke sometimes hears voices or whispers in her sister’s apartment, and one wall is repeatedly overcome with mould.

Though she survives the surgery, Izzy required an emergency hysterectomy, a devastating blow, as she had hoped to try for a child once the procedure was over.

But as Izzy recovers, Brooke starts to undergo physical changes — particularly a growing belly.

Afterbirth relies on dreamy, surreal imagery for its horror elements, filling the narrative with a thick sense of dread. The apartment building itself exudes a dark personality, making Brooke feel more and more isolated even as she tries to branch out and meet new people while in B.C.

The films mentioned throughout the narrative are definitely examples of “mommy horror” — some classic, some more recent — but they don’t immediately connect with the themes or the events of the novel. The closest example would be Rosemary’s Baby (interestingly, only the film and not the novel is mentioned), as Brooke draws parallels between the New York apartment building and the Vancouver high-rise where her sister lives.

But Afterbirth is much more focused on the body horror aspects of pregnancy and childbirth and, while there are numerous examples of horror films which explore that, they aren’t a part of Brooke’s framing of her own experience.

The novel is certainly scary and definitely pulls the reader along with a growing sense of doom.

At the same time, there are some loose ends and, because of the dreamy nature of the horror elements, some narrative pieces are left hanging or unclearly straddling the line between metaphorical and literal.

Despite a few weaker bits, Afterbirth is a strong debut and a thought-provoking, queer-focused take on mommy horror. It’s well worth a look for both genre diehards and curious readers just tipping their toe into horror.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His latest story collection Donner Parties and Other Anti-Social Gatherings is out now from At Bay Press and was named one of the best books of 2024 by the Free Press. He also co-edited the horror anthology What Draws Us Near, published by Little Ghosts Books.