Synopsis:
Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reckoning” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help.
Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.
But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart-–literally-–as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn–-but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?
Review:
Dan Simmon’s “Carrion Comfort,” meets Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” meets the hellscape that is 2024 in this tangibly scary, truly depressing, and incredibly audacious social horror novel from the twisted mind of Clay McLeod Chapman. Thank you Titan Books for an ARC of this one, reading this doom-laden road trip hot on the heels of the election has left me reeling beyond what I, and maybe Chapman, could have foreseen. “Wake Up and Open Your Eyes,” is vastly different from anything we’ve read from Clay so far, but is simultaneously so Clay. To pivot so sharply, so brilliantly, away from his trade-mark grief horror, and end up somewhere so spectacularly unhinged, so bold, brash and bitter…bravo. Yes, a sharp turn down a pitch-black and rather provocative road, “Wake Up And Open Your Eyes,” is a novel that delights in its divisiveness, and is all clarity… zero coddle. Chapman will be opening eyes as of January 7th.
We follow Noah Fairchild, who has been trying to deprogram his increasingly non-PC parents for the past few thanksgivings. The non-stop voicemails have been an issue for a while, gradually increasing from a few a month, to a few a day. When Noah’s mum begins her spiel about “The Great Reawakening,” Noah decides it’s about time he brave the seven hour drive, from Brooklyn to Virginia, and check up on ma and pa. His welcome is far from warm. Taking “brain rot,” to a whole new level, the wild conspiracies and xenophobic bile spouted by “Fax News,” have lead to a rapid deterioration, transforming Noah’s beloved mother, who used to tuck him in each night, into the creature that attacks him. This… eventful visit, is not one that Noah would have had to have made, but for the radio silence from his older brother Asher, who lives just around the corner from his folks. Little does Noah know that Asher’s own family are slowly changing from a relatively normal family of four into internet-obsessed, media-dependent “Boob tube Charlies.” The Great Reawakening is coming, and it may well tear all of the Fairchilds apart.
“Wake up and open your eyes,” is first and foremost a seething condemnation of our collective gullibility in the digital age- a cautionary tale about what happens when the most impressionable among us are pulled into the outrageous and problematic schlock, that… um, certain news outlets, put out there. If not parents, then we have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, who perhaps need to put “The Daily Mail,” down and back away slowly. This is a concern Chapman plays upon, demonstrating that this subtle indoctrination of the more vulnerable amongst us, could easily become a nationwide brain-washing, resulting in even more violence and discrimination than we’re already plagued by- a dangerous brand of mass hysteria. In my first ever official review for the site, Lowland Rider by Chet Williamson, I began with “The scariest type of horror is feasible,” and that’s something that proves true in this one. What’s scarier than monsters? People. Especially people fed a steady diet of half truths and moral outrage. Chapman is practically shaking us by the shoulders, warning us that we must learn to question where we’re getting our information from and who online we’re trusting, ergo, wake up and open our eyes… at risk of Noah’s journey through this post-apocalyptic hellscape becoming less of a dystopian and more of a travelogue.
As aforementioned, this is unlike anything CMC has written before, in that it centres around America’s culture and political climate, as opposed to grief. You’ll be pleased to know that it is undeniably Clay all over, as one would hope. Grief, in some form does appear, with Noah forced to let go of the notion he will ever see his parents and brother, sane, again, as well as the idea that the trip back to his family in Brooklyn is one he very well may not survive. Arguably he grieves society and morality, quickly having to accept that those rules and constructs are no more. There’s a rather fun little Easter egg in relation to “Whisper Down The Lane,” with of course, Clay’s default setting of Virginia being where most of The Fairchilds live. Most importantly, we see a continuation of Clay’s epic prose, which consistently stuns, and elicits such disgust (smoothie blender, need I say more) whilst also being easy to slip into and enjoy… those 400 pages flew by. I laughed, I cringed, I wanted it to end, and I wanted more, I woke up and opened my eyes… this novel will leave you delirious.
The call to action in “Wake Up and Open Your Eyes,” is as urgent as it is unsettling.The novel explores the dangerous allure of misinformation, and how quickly and devastatingly things can go wrong when it is allowed to spiral unchecked. It is the most efficient and explicit warning I’ve stumbled across in a while, at its core, Chapman’s latest is not a road trip from Virginia to Brooklyn, it’s about a society, our society, a society that is powering toward unrest, revolution, hysteria, conflict and ultimately apocalypse. Alongside pitch-black humour and sharp-eyed observations, Clay demands we confront the chaos we’ve been sleepwalking into. It’s hardcore, and a novel some, myself included, will praise for its fearless insights, whilst others may recoil from it- the people who need this book won’t give it the time of day. A shame really, as it seems that one of the most controversial horror novels of the year, is coincidentally one of the best.