Books like The Monster and the Mirror — picked by fans

This book, about a young recluse losing grip on reality, unable to discern truth from her own memory, had me hooked. I found the writing vicious and fierce, the imagery haunting, and the overall focus on memory and trauma as horrors that can both shape and betray us distressing in the very best of ways. Memory and one’s sense of self are important to my own work, and as such, this book managed to tap into some personal unease.

That it’s also so sharply written (and wonderfully f*cked-up) is the icing on an already delicious narrative cake. Recommended for those who like their horror to mess with their sense of reality—personal and not. My favorite read of 2023.

This book stressed me out. What starts as the tale of a married couple dealing with a death in the family devolves into something chaotic. I couldn’t stop reading because I was desperate to see where this downward spiral would take me next.

I resonated deeply with the main character and her quest to be so perfect that it drove her to the brink. I, too, sometimes focus on perfectionism so hard that I feel the subtle whisper of insanity. I love it when stories relate to the darker thoughts we keep hidden inside.

In my own work, as is likely obvious, mental health is a huge focus. I’m someone with a history of depression, anxiety, and anorexia. That middle element here, anxiety, is something I’ve seen written about a great deal, but rarely have I experienced it as profoundly as I did in this book.

When Alice starts losing control of her reality when her spiral begins in earnest… It was like reading what a panic attack feels like. And I mean that as the highest of compliments. I think this might make this read a difficult pill for some to swallow, but I was left in awe of Elliott’s skill.

The book is captivating in its own right, the story (and story within the story) entertaining and engaging, but this personal connection to the feel of it all has cemented it in my brain.

Allyson’s book is a collection of essays on the intersection of queerness, identity, and pop culture—horror primarily. Which means, yeah, it was practically engineered for me.

I found much to love and much to relate to within these pages. The way she weaves together personal experience, horror tropes, and urban legends is masterful, and I found the descriptions of gatekeeping and how it results in questioning one’s identity/place in things to hit rather personally.

I read this novel when I was twenty-two years old.

I remember exactly where I was (in the kitchen of a dilapidated apartment I loved) and what time of day I read it (early afternoon until early evening). I cackled and sobbed (I am not a sobber), and afterward, I couldn’t get the main character’s voice out of my head for days. He narrated everywhere I went and everything I did.

Before then, I’d always written casual nonsense for my own entertainment, but I knew afterward I wanted to do that—I wanted to make people laugh, horrify them, and put their hearts through the wringer. 

This book inspired me as an author and how to write with conviction.

The mental health element of the story was totally relatable, being a former worker in such a setting. I understood the hostility surrounding schizophrenia and the thoughts and feelings of the main character, a young boy who had the condition. 

Skewed thinking and phobias can be isolating, where the sufferer can feel truly alone and this is the overwhelming sense throughout. 

I enjoyed reading this novel because of how tangible Martha and her struggle felt to me—both with her own mental illness and with her failing marriage.

This novel illuminated for me the idea that a character can be sad and lonely but at the same time retain a sense of humor and a comedic level of exasperation. I especially loved the relationship Martha has with her sister, Ingrid, and the sharp reflections this novel offers on motherhood and family. 

Nellie Bly was one of the great muckraking reporters in American history. She pretends to be insane and is admitted to the “mad house.” Along the way, she exposes the horrible treatment of those suffering from mental illness, but of her treatment in a boarding home, where spoiled beef was served.

Many at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Roosevelt Island suffered no mental illness; they simply didn’t know how to speak English, she wrote. “I left the insane ward with pleasure and regret—pleasure that I was once more able to enjoy the free breath of heaven; regret that I could not have brought with me some of the unfortunate women who lived and suffered with me, and who, I am convinced, are just as sane as I was and am now myself.”

Her reporting led to a grand jury investigation and reforms inside the asylum.

In 1995, in the attic of a decommissioned mental hospital in New York State, a curator of New York State Museum, a local volunteer, a psychiatrist/ documentarian, and a photographer found a trove of suitcases, doctor’s bags, steamer trunks with Chinese motif, housekeys, photographs, earrings, belts, upright ladies Saratoga trunks (“so named because they could hold enough clothes for an entire summer season in the resort town of Saratoga Springs.")

The researchers ventured further into the hospital's now vacant sites, an abandoned bowling alley, and its burial grounds. Finally, they obtained permission to get a few hours with the medical records, which were stored in an abandoned hospital building contaminated with asbestos and lead, requiring them to don protective gear and booties.

Their hope was to bring the forgotten patients who’d spent years in the institution back to life. This book and its intricate details haunted me. There are so… show more.

If you need inspiration to write strange stories, then read the Brazilian Machado de Assis. In his photos he looks like a prim and proper gentleman, giving no hint he wrote some of the whackiest fiction you’ll ever encounter—for example, one story is told from the perspective of a needle. The Alienist is a favorite. Bacamarte, a man devoted to science, opens an insane asylum in the town of Itaguaí, taking in the mentally ill. But his scientific mind leads him to the inevitable conclusion that he must also include healthy people who, according to his diagnosis, are about to go crazy. Soon, his asylum, Casa Verdi, accommodates the entire town. Then, in the ending of the story… Well, you’ll have to read it yourself to find out.