Okay, Chuck Tingle. You win. I keep trying to be cynical, I keep picking up this horror books thinking the writing style isn’t for me, and I keep being completely won over by the end. Next time, I’m all in from page one, because the concepts Chuck Tingle plays with in these stories are so fascinating.
Lucky Day is a strange kind of horror novel: there’s one chapter of complete carnage, where millions of people die in unlikely ways during what is later dubbed the Low-Probability Event. Chapter two is packed full of enough gore for the whole book, but most of the rest of the story is about existentialism as well as the mystery of what caused the Low-Probability Event and how to prevent it from happening again.
We meet Vera at what seems like the high point in her life: she’s a statistics and probability professor who sees the world through this lens. She has a strict routine, and it works for her. She just published a book, and she’s also gotten engaged to her girlfriend. In chapter one, she has a get together with her friends, fiancée, and mother to celebrate her book coming out. Vera also comes out to her mother as bisexual at this event, which is where things start to go wrong. Not only does her mother react badly, insisting that bisexuality isn’t real, but right after, Vera’s mother is killed in front of her suddenly and inexplicably—and so begins the Low-Probability Event.
Four years later, the world has moved on from this bizarre and horrific day, but Vera has not. She has sunk into a deep depressive state, hardly able to even feed herself. She’s completely numb. When Special Agent Layne arrives at her door, she tries to shoo him away, but the annoyingly cheery man will not be dissuaded, and soon she finds herself teaming up with him to investigate the Low-Probability Event—and whether the casino she wrote an investigative book about is to blame.
It took me most of the book to realize what this story is really about. It is horror, but it’s existential horror. It takes the concept of “bisexuality doesn’t exist” and marries it to existential dread: Vera feels like she doesn’t understand her own existence, now that she can’t understand it through statistics and probability. Everything feels pointless and random. In order to find meaning in her life again, she also has to address the damage biphobia has done in her understanding of herself. She has to prove to herself that despite constantly being told otherwise, she does exist.
Like the other Chuck Tingle books I’ve read, despite the gore and the surreal moments, at its heart, it’s earnest. And what can I say, it breaks through my cynicism. Existential horror and bisexual erasure not only pair well together conceptually, they also both have shaped my life substantially, so it’s no surprise this worked so well for me. It is weird, for sure. The pacing is unusual. For most of the book, I didn’t know what I was supposed to think of Layne. But for me, it nails the landing. I’m always impressed at how Chuck Tingle manages to write such heartfelt books that are also inarguably in the horror genre. I look forward to reading more of them!
Content warnings: Pet death/cat death, depression, suicidal thoughts, gore, death of a parent
