Book Review: Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman

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“. . . how do you give an exorcism to the whole country?”

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Noah Fairchild knew he was losing his parents to far-right cable news, so when his mother leaves him a cryptic voicemail mentioning a “Great Awakening,” he initially believes it to be yet another conspiracy theory. But after they stop answering the phone, he panics and drives from Brooklyn, NY, to Richmond VA, to check on them. What he finds upon arrival is more shocking and horrifying than he could have ever imagined. Gone are his once-polite Southern elders and their tidy abode; in their place, violent, trance-like strangers living in squalor. And after they attack him and he’s forced to fight for his life, Noah realizes the entire country has been affected. The source? Particular channels, apps, and websites. Can Noah and his nephew survive the frenzied hordes and make it back to Brooklyn, or will they die trying?

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a visceral, nonstop nightmare surrounding a demonic possession epidemic spread via media. The novel is a searing exercise in stress and anxiety and a master class in horror and tension. The first 100 pages absolutely rocket by, fueled by a commanding sense of dread, disbelief, revulsion, and outright terror underscored by touching memories and emotional reminiscences — crucial, bygone human components in the mess that is the ol’ US of A — a relentless, dystopian-level disaster that, at certain levels, feels uncannily familiar and hits appallingly close to home.

The body horror scenes are unbelievably gnarly, vile, revolting, and effective, as are the pacing and writing style, which produce the same manic strain, disorientation, exhaustion, and overload achieved by exorbitant screen time or political/societal reflection. Interwoven throughout are overarching feelings of desperation and overwhelm, vulnerability and dread; it’s nerve-wracking and unpleasant, exhausting and devastating, as it should be. As it is.

It’s also darkly funny at times, the occasional moments of black humor necessary relief and welcome levity amid unrelenting carnage and mayhem, which escalates to the point the reader and characters almost become desensitized, an intuitive and prescient modern-day parallel rife with cruelty, inequity, suppression, ignorance, and dehumanization viewed through screens and subsequently twisted, exploited, and misreported. It’s an incredibly gruesome and brutal, no-holds-barred exploration of lies, manipulation, division, and influence; humanity, monstrosity, denial, and reality. One where everyone is a target, a tool, a puppet, and a means, humankind a sinking ship riddled with cracks and divisions so numerous and deep, it’s difficult to see exactly where the fissures began or to imagine where (or if) they’ll end or coalesce, providing a mirror reflecting and reinforcing what we already fear and know: it’s far too late to pull the plug or power down.

🖤Amanda

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