by Jay Wilburn
The novella We Need to do Something is sharp, quick, and brutal. That’s not completely different from previous Max Booth III works. The Nightly Disease is one of my favorite books of all time and these elements are on display in that masterful work in addition to Booth’s dark humor. Carnivorous Lunar Activities was one of my favorite books of 2019 and he demonstrated his fast-paced and concise brand of storytelling with expert use of dialogue to build characters and advance the story. The dialogue in We Need to Do Something is used well, too. Of all the modern authors who use brutality to tell a particular story that calls for it, when he chooses to use it, Max Booth III shows the proper way to play that instrument. In We Need to Do Something, he leans into the darkness more than the humor and more fully than he may have done in any of his previous works.
Like he did in Carnivorous Lunar Activities, Booth plays with the concept of most of the story occurring in a single location. This “locked room” concept forces the storyteller to step up the characters, the dialogue, the narration, and a very tight form of action. Booth does this better than anyone I can think of. He leaves nothing unexplored. No detail in the story is wasted and everything that is mentioned is brought back once or twice more creatively terrible than the first time it appeared. While he was writing this, I imagine him saying to himself, is there a more powerful way I can tell this piece of the story? Is there something more I may have left out? As a reader, I’m telling you, no, he found the most powerful version of everything, right to the edge and beyond it.
A family of four shelters in a bathroom during a tornado. A tree comes down on the house and blocks the door. They have to wait for rescue. They need to hold on and stick together. How long is too long to wait? How much stress is too much before you can’t keep on your masks anymore? What happens when you break and what happens after that? When and if rescue does finally come, will there be anything left of your humanity to salvage?
There are a few books I can name that do an excellent job with blurring the line between the idea of whether what I am seeing as I read is the supernatural terror it appears to be or is it the creeping madness of the character growing over the top of the narrative? Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay is one. Saint Sadist by Lucas Mangum is another. This novella by Max Booth III strikes an absolute insane balance where any of it could be real and that is terrifying, but all of it could be the madness that we are now a part of and somehow that’s even worse.
This is not a “feel good” story. This is not splattery cartoon violence splashed across the pages to amuse you. These characters are real, in a real situation of dire peril, and the things they have to endure to survive everything they face, including themselves, is visceral and played for keeps.
There are very few great authors I trust to tell me a story like this. There are too many ways to fail at this story — to waste my time and to abuse me with as much bad writing as senseless carnage. Max Booth III is one of those few that turns this into something great without losing any of the awful reality. I trust him to take me on this journey, but I also let him take me here with a great sense of dread because while he will tell the story well, he will not be kind about it, with the characters or the audience.
When people have asked me for the most extreme horror or the most brutal survival horror out there, for a long time, I have always said Survivor by J.F. Gonzalez. It is still a highwater mark for this style of story. Now, I’m going to have to steer those brave souls seeking the limit of what is possible in horror to We Need to do Something by Max Booth III.
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