NOTABLE WORKS REVIEW: The Grief Hole by Kaaron Warren
NOTABLE WORKS
REVIEW: The Grief Hole by Kaaron Warren
Reviewed bv E.F. Schraeder
Trigger Warning: This review addresses grief and trauma.
A universal of all life, death touches everyone sooner or later. With inevitable losses follow forms of grief and depression that can range from manageable to complicated, and in Kaaron Warren’s The Grief Hole we find a mesmerizing supernatural lens to consider how loss, even the deepest pain, connects us all. In The Grief Hole readers meet Theresa, a woman who has an unusual gift for seeing people’s clinging ghosts, each hinting at how they will die. This ability leads Theresa to a life of service, where she hopes her “interventions” can nudge people away from looming tragedies. After an intervention goes wrong and results in a violent attack, she takes respite in an uncle’s seaside home. Though meant as an escape from the grinding obligations of her nightmarish visions, Theresa instead discovers more tragedies to unravel in the hovering ghosts surrounding her relatives, still reeling from the death by suicide of her artist cousin, Amber. Theresa attempts to understand the girl’s death and recover her lost artwork from the private collection of a charismatic singer with a near cultish following, Sol Evictus. In the process, Theresa uncovers a secret place like no other, where suffering itself seems manifested. Theresa must contend with her own most potent fears to resolve buried feelings, facing her own losses to undermine a dangerous power that’s as alluring as it is terrible.
A devilishly suspenseful story populated with offbeat and emotionally complex characters, Warren turns the genre’s usual notions of hauntings and ghosts inside out. The haunting here is as personal as it is disturbing, with ghosts that aren’t vengeful or communicative so much as persistent and nagging. Theresa’s ghosts are more like moths, attracted to the burning light of lives they recognize as familiar—like attracting like. It’s a terribly effective and frightening concept, pressing the line between fate and choice. More than that, Theresa’s visions bring the reality of inevitable death into the realm of daily life—never too far away, no matter how many distractions people pile on in their (mostly futile) attempts at avoidance, like a crowd of people that “filled in the empty space. Noise and nonsense” (75). The embedded analysis of the human condition is, for me, one of the jewels of genius in Warren’s writing. Another is the visceral imagery: nested in her serene beachside oasis, Theresa’s encounters and memories as she pushes toward resolution are both striking and unsettling. Like an artist’s use of light and shadow, Warren’s succinct descriptions and unexpected turns deliver a reading experience that’s as unforgettable as it is probing. Throughout the novel Warren’s representations of grief, depression, and suicide are intense and poignant; though at times brutal, the delicate character reveals remain tender and without an exploitive lens, even as Sol’s exploitations are interrogated.
The Grief Hole carries a deeply personal meaning to me, no stranger to depression or the emotional weight that lingers from a family suicide. From my own experience with suicide, complicated grief, and depression, I value fiction that reflects and represents so many shades of familiar pain. Everything from handling domestic abuse to a planned suicide and many shades of human exploitation dwell in these pages. There is so much that’s troubling, yet strangely Warren manages to instill a glimmer of hope in a work that bubbles with despair. To me, this reflects a layered resonance with the HWA Mental Health Initiative. Most clearly, The Grief Hole reveals tragedy and emotional suffering as reality—normalizing the spaces for acknowledging hardship and processing emotional pain. It’s also in shared pain that Theresa’s family begins to find a way
to connect, and in that recognition waits a seed of resilience. Moreover, Warren’s sensitive character portrayals challenge the stigma of mental illness. Tied to these unique supernatural realities and the terrible things Theresa and her family can see, Warren crafts a beautiful story about the burden and power of living with the knowledge of how fragile life can be.
E.F. Schraeder writes about not quite real worlds. A Rhysling-nominated poet, Schraeder’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies and their full-length publications include The Price of a Small Hot Fire (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2023), What Happened Was Impossible (Ghoulish Books, 2023), and other works.
