Tell Me I'm Worthless 
by Alison Rumfitt 
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cipher Press (28 Oct. 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 276 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1838390022
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1838390020

A book review by Jonathan Thornton 

I don’t think I have read any book as powerful, as burningly furious at the current state of England, as Alison Rumfitt’s superlative Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021). Here is a book that fearlessly confronts the rotten, beating heart of fascism with admirable passion and frankness. Here is a book that centres the trans experience, in a time when it seems every day there is yet another piece of vitriolic transphobic published by the British press. And here is an incredibly written debut horror novel that shows exactly horror’s strength as a tool to pry open and air the present’s most festering wounds. Tell Me I’m Worthless made me laugh, made me cry, and scared the shit out of me. It eloquently grapples with the rising tide of hatred and intolerance that threatens to drown this country, and unflinchingly gazes into the very roots of these problems and how they exert their stranglehold on modern society. In short, Rumfitt’s novel is utterly essential and you should drop whatever you’re doing and read it right now.

Three years ago, three friends spent a night in an abandoned House. Only two of them left, both of them suffering deep trauma and with wildly conflicting stories about what happened on that strange night. Alice, a transwoman, is self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, barely inhabiting her life. Ila, her former best friend, has joined a group of TERFs and spreads transphobic vitriol online. Both of them are haunted by the hateful, vengeful spirit that resides in the House, both of them are suffering through the trauma of rape, of their friend Hannah never returning from the House, of losing their friendship with each other, of living in an England blighted by a very every-day, mundane, English fascism. Amidst the rising tide of hatred and intolerance, whether for trans people like Alice or Ila with her half-Jewish, half-Pakistani heritage, the two ex-friends find themselves pulled further apart from each other yet inexorably drawn back to the House and the red room that keeps its unpleasant, terrifying secret.

Tell Me I’m Worthless cuts deep into the English psyche to explore the knotted roots of colonialism, classism, misogyny, homophobia and eugenics that are entwined in English Nationalism. The House, named Albion by the arrogant and wealthy politician who had the house built, serves as a nexus for all the unpleasant truths that modern England is built on that we would rather sweep away, and a focal point for when all this repressed violence bubbles up and erupts. Rumfitt is absolutely unflinching in her willingness to expose all this. Her complex and troubled characters, at the intersection of different identities and privilege, force the reader to confront their own privilege and complicity in our attitudes towards people who are different from us, how the poisonous media and psychic landscape of 21st century Britain is dividing us and warping our ability to connect and empathise with others. She expertly ties this into the book’s visceral body horror. The reader is confronted with repeated images of warped and broken bodies twisted into unpleasant shapes, rooms dripping with blood and bodily fluids, ravenous unforgiving orifices. The grotesque body horror echoes the physical violence and trauma enacted on Othered bodies; foreigner’s bodies, women’s bodies, homosexuals’ bodies, whether through the systematic violence of colonialism, the brutish violence of hate crimes, or the state sanctioned vivisection and experimentation allowed under Victorian medical science. The link between psychic and physical violence is made explicit, is made graphically visible, so physically sickening the reader can not turn away or deny it.

Whilst Rumfitt’s novel is undeniably intense and excoriating, it is not without a dark, wry humour. There’s a running thread throughout the book about the racist, hateful spirit of the House manifesting itself through former-indie-heartthrob-turned-reactionary-knobhead Morrissey in the Smiths poster on Alice’s wall. Rumfitt’s characters are deeply human, their manifest flaws existing alongside a desperate need to be seen, accepted, loved, that makes them tragically believable. The reader can’t help but be drawn into their dramas and struggles, even as you know it’s not going to work out well for them. Rumfitt has a very pertinent understanding of how fascism works, how it manifests in English culture, which allows her to both parody it mercilessly but also to mock it in a way that exposes its inherent ridiculousness along with its horrifying nature. In its shifting visions of alternate fascist dystopian Britains a hairs breadth away from our reality, the novel brings home the crushing mundanity of fascism. As much as the novel frequently takes flight into Barker-esque psychedelic carnivals of body horror, much of the power of the book comes from how she relates the day-to-day malaise and sickness that comes from living with fascism, the way toxic mindsets slowly begin to permeate every aspect of culture and social interaction.
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Throughout Tell Me I’m Worthless, Rumfitt acknowledges her debt to a history of queer horror fiction, from Shirley Jackson to Clive Barker, often with direct references. She is a writer who deeply understands what she is doing, and the role of horror in making visible the darkness and unpleasantness of reality, of forcing the reader to confront the evils of the present. Can there be any escape from fascism? Rumfitt gives us no easy answers, but instead forces the reader to look anew at the world around us and where we’re going, where we already are. It is an incredible piece of work from a debut writer, and the book that we need right now.