Little Brother

by Adam Cosco

Rating: ****

Twelve-year-old Leslie Adams feels something is wrong with her, inside, but her dad insists she’s just sleepwalking. But she isn’t sleepwalking when Leslie slashes Tommy Spence to death at his own birthday party, although she cannot remember the attack.

Six years later, Leslie tries to make a new beginning, enrolling at college to study investigative journalism, although Tommy’s murder haunts her.  When she starts to experience disturbing incidents and blackouts, Leslie senses that whatever dark abomination she carries, which made her kill Tommy, is only growing stronger…

Cosco opens his highly creepy novella straight into one of Leslie’s unnerving “sleepwalking” episodes. It’s primeval, baffling, and believable. Cosco writes sharp, vivid sentences, his prose straightforward yet emotive as he unfolds this darkly atmospheric, preternatural tale.

Leslie’s fits are described with terrifying, visceral precision that both fascinates and repulses. The reader is aware that something within Leslie is causing her behavior, but Cosco keeps the details unpredictable and Leslie’s symptoms puzzling until the monstrous truth begins to emerge toward the end of chapter fifteen.

The novella is focused and pacey, the story told through Leslie’s close third-person perspective in short, rapid chapters that vibrate with increasing panic and revulsion.

She’s a well-drawn, singular character whose trajectory is believable in context. Her emotional disorientation and damage are revealed through her raw inner dialogue and fractured reactions, which become progressively more traumatized and frightened.

When Leslie begins college, the narrative takes on a distinctly ominous tone, heavy with foreboding. The reader is constantly on edge as Leslie’s issues grow more horrifying and volatile.

Nonetheless, Cosco offers glimpses of her personality away from the horror through occasional moments of normality and her relationship with Darren, a teaching assistant in the college's cadaver laboratory who also knew Leslie at school.

There is a connection between Leslie and Darren, but it’s slightly underdeveloped, which initially casts doubt on Darren’s motives and reliability. Notwithstanding, this ambiguity adds another layer of perplexity to the narrative.

Paulette, Leslie’s therapist, is depicted with subtlety; her immediate, reactive expressions often tell the reader more than her verbal responses. Cosco makes a bold decision with the therapist, which becomes the catalyst for discovering exactly what is inside Leslie.

The following few chapters serve up a smorgasbord of gore and grotesquerie. It could have veered into a far-fetched tangle, but Cosco maintains razor-sharp focus and momentum, enhanced by the bright, sterile medical setting and forensic detail that make the situation horrendously credible and grimly compelling.

Little Brother is a fast, compact, and bone-chilling biological horror with strong visual appeal.  Highly recommended.

*Click here for my review of Adam Cosco’s The Heart of a Child. 

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