It’s a pitch-perfect look into what motivates people, abuse of power and malicious exploitation behind a screen of anonymity that won’t be so easily forgotten after the final page is done. ‘Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke’ is a truly masterful piece of writing.īy opening with a summation of how things ultimately play out, it adds a crushing weight and tension to everything that comes after, turning seemingly innocent messages into something altogether more sinister. There is a lot happening in the correspondence between these two women that is never stated but is there if you read carefully enough, and the ease with which things get out of hand is what disturbs the most. Much like social media in 2020, the way people represent themselves online is not always how they may be face to face and intentions are easily hidden behind carefully curated tweets or seemingly innocuous posts with a veiled agenda. I was struck by an urge to re-read immediately after putting it down because it is one of those rare stories where every line, and every word, carries weight. As skilled as Larocca is at subtlety, and conveying his characters feelings and intentions without necessarily stating them explicitly, he proves to be equally adept at making the reader uncomfortable, and the books ending is equal parts memorable, upsetting and horrifyingly surreal.īy the books close, answers are not forthcoming beyond those that we were given right from page one. Things indeed have gotten worse since then. Things escalate fairly rapidly once Agnes feels more comfortable with Zoe, and things build to a horrifying crescendo, replete with some pretty gnarly and unpleasant body horror. Things have gotten worse is a story firmly rooted in the time and space of when it’s set the early 2000s United States when everyone still firmly believed in the internet’s potential to connect people, yet it also lives outside of time and space, forever stuck in AOL chat rooms and email chains. Zoe, on the other hand, remains something of an enigma, even as the story progresses and while we learn a lot about Agnes, her upbringing and her life in general throughout the book, most of what we learn about Zoe is inferred and not explicit, knowing what we do by her actions and by reading between the lines, and not what she tells Agnes. the discourse around eric larocca/things have gotten worse since we last spoke is such an interesting combination of internet fiction purity culture and the. This book is a beautifully written story about love and loss. It’s brutally honest and will make you feel all the emotions, but it’s so worth it in the end. Reader Reviews This book is a must-read for any LGBTQ+ person out there.
Agnes seems almost desperate to share private details about her life, freely telling very personal stories with very little encouragement. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is his first novel. It is an understated and low-key start, but the brilliance of this novella is how insidiously the stakes build and the escalation slowly creeps up on you.
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