This book combines a novella and a short story set 100 years apart with some interconnections (the narrator of the short story is distantly related to one of the people involved in the first novella). The first novella starts out quite interesting, following the doctors‘ at a sanatorium who become obsessed with a quest to find out what happens in the afterlife, quickly crossing many lines of ethical treatment and instead turning towards a lot of murder. I found the main characters disturbingly realistic in their eugenic and sexist beliefs and their complete disregard of actual human suffering as long as they could make some money out of it otherwise and satisfy their medical curiosity. Particularly the main character has a strong voice and even though is repulsive, he manages to set the mood and ambience of the story perfectly. Some parts of the story were never followed up on (why do women spend so much time on Bidets? And why do the men care so much they are willing to kill?) and that left me feeling a bit unsatisfied but all in all this was a very morbid and interesting novella and would have been a 3 star read for me.
Unfortunately there‘s also a second story in this book and while it attempts to be creepy and dive into more human depravity, the scenes did not work to build an even remotely comparable unsettling atmosphere as the first book did. It follows a young artist, a former child prodigy, who favours macabre displays, never shows any care for other people and tries to see how dark his art can go. The narrator also doesn’t manage to draw us as deeply into his depraved mind as much as the first story does and it really suffers from that. In general, the story just did not really land for me and seemed to dive deep into depravity at points solely to be shocking, without actually having anything interesting to say. Only one star, leading to the final rating of two stars.
TWs for sexual assault, eugenics, mass murder, sexual assault of an autistic child, fatphobia, body horror