Tell Me I'm Worthless

by Alison Rumfitt

Paperback, 276 pages

English language

Published Dec. 25, 2021 by Cipher Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-8383900-2-0

(17 reviews)

A dark, unflinching haunted house novel that takes readers from the well of the literary gothic, up through Brighton's queer scene, and out into the heart of modern day trans experience in the UK.

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well. Alice is living a haunted existence, selling videos of herself cleaning for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. She hasn’t spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn't seen Hannah either.

A dark, unflinching haunted house novel that takes readers from the well of the literary gothic, up through Brighton's queer scene, and out into the heart of modern day trans experience in the UK.

Memories of that night torment her mind and her flesh, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, past the KEEP OUT sign, over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, she knows she must go. Together Alice and Ila must face the horrifying occurrences that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, who the House has chosen to make its own.

Cutting, disruptive, and darkly funny, Tell Me I'm Worthlessis a vital work of trans fiction that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors as it examines the devastating effects of trauma and the way fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other.

1 edition

Jaelyn reviewed Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Review of "Tell Me I'm Worthless" on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

I have mixed feelings about this, largely as horror, even gothic, isn’t my most comfortable genre. Most of the horror elements didn’t land with me as a result, it felt a little blunt, heavy-handed and intended to shock without really offering me much shock.

I did, however, enjoy following the diverging characters of Alice and Ila, the toxic elements of their relationship, and the echoes of the house through their lives. It speaks a lot about the horror within British society as a whole (the country as a haunted house in a way) but the way it hits points on racist and TERF discourse seems to just miss …

Alice, Ila and Hannah once spent a night in a haunted house. Since then, Alice and Ila’s life have fallen into depression and fear, each believing the other assaulted them. Hannah never left the house. Now the house is calling them back.

I have mixed feelings about this, largely as horror, even gothic, isn’t my most comfortable genre. Most of the horror elements didn’t land with me as a result, it felt a little blunt, heavy-handed and intended to shock without really offering me much shock.

I did, however, enjoy following the diverging characters of Alice and Ila, the toxic elements of their relationship, and the echoes of the house through their lives. It speaks a lot about the horror within British society as a whole (the country as a haunted house in a way) but the way it hits points on racist and TERF discourse seems to just miss the mark and not really give a resolution to what it is saying. With how explicit it is on such triggering topics, I wish there was more of a payoff there.

Martinza reviewed Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Review of "Tell Me I'm Worthless" on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

I cried a little bit after finishing it

Themlyn reviewed Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Review of "Tell Me I'm Worthless" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Antifascist purgation? Queercore catharsis? Parasocial trauma bonding?

Alison Rumfitt is a ruthless, and desperately needed, voice in our current wave of liberation struggle. Not since Susan Stryker's "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix" have I been so thoroughly ravaged by a, devastatingly generous, offering of love and rage.

This book is a brutal blessing for the tormented — truly some unrepentant nourishment for an exasperated soul.

alx reviewed Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Horrifying, upsetting and deeply uncomfortable

4 stars

My word, this book does not hold anything back. A horror story centred on the experiences of its characters with a malignant house, it explores trauma and the insidious creep of fascist attitudes, against a backdrop of the ongoing culture war in the UK.

I particularly appreciated the way chapters alternate between the perspectives of Alice, Ila, and the house itself; each cycle taking the reader deeper into their relationships and encounters with each other, ramping up the dread and horror until it spills over.

Having spent many years living in Brighton (where this is set) I was able to picture things more vividly than I ordinarily would have. That said, if there's one aspect that broke me out of the story a bit, it's the references to real-life people and events, which perhaps rooted things too much in the right-here-and-now. But maybe that's necessary for a book which is …

The author includes a content warning at the front, and rightly so as it includes multiple themes, attitudes and occurences which many will be disturbed or upset by. It is not the nature of this book to deal with them sensitively, but I also didn't feel that anything was used gratuitously or in a way that downplayed its seriousness.

Colin Cogle reviewed Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Review of "Tell Me I'm Worthless" on 'Goodreads'

1 star

It’s not the content I don’t like. It’s the writing style. The stream of consciousness devolves into sentences that are paragraphs long, and paragraphs that span multiple pages. Sometimes I just had to skip ahead past the unneeded description and fantasizing until the plot resumed. I still can’t figure out how the book ended, even after re-reading it.

I’d read another of this author’s books, though. I feel like there was some great promise here, but it was poorly executed.