After a banger debut with She is a Haunting, I was eager to get my hands on Trang Tranh Tran’s sophomore novel They Bloom at Night. Tran delivers another gripping story, with atmospheric tension intertwined with the struggle to fit in to your own body and community. This book dragged me in as relentless the tides, and then enveloped me in slow creeping horror and the lurking threat of the unknown in the water and the unknown of the body. If you are, like me, reading a lot of horror at this particular moment in time, this is a worthy addition to any to-read list.
Set in humid, climate change-ravaged Mercy, Louisiana, a particularly virulent red algae bloom has added another blow to an already reeling town dependent on a dying fishing industry. Noon runs a fishing boat with her Ma, who refuses to leave for a less devastated area in the hopes that her dead husband and son will reincarnate as one of the strange sea creatures that have been appearing. Noon herself struggles to cope both with her mother and with her changing body as the sea grows more inhospitable and their situation deteriorates. When the local bully boy blackmails them to bring back one of the creatures threatening the town, Noon as to team up with his daughter to figure out what, exactly, is causing all the disappearances in town.
I love the dual-pronged horror of this story. The first, outwardly obvious horror is the environment itself – the worsening disasters, the algae bloom and the mutations in the wildlife it’s causing, the spirits Noon’s Ma believes inhabits the ocean around them, and the disappearances that can’t all be explained by people packing up and moving to less waterlogged pastures. I think it neatly expresses the existential environmental horror that many of us are feeling right now and gives it a bit more form, as if the algae bloom is the environmental equivalent of a zombie plot. It’s there, it’s relentless, it’s consuming people. On the other hand you have Noon, who isn’t just going through a typical coming of age story. In addition to having to figure out normal things like transitioning to adulthood, her complicated relationship with her mother and her memories of the rest of her family, her relationship to her Vietnamese family’s community and traditions, she has to deal with memories of a traumatic experience she would rather forget, her feelings for Covey the daughter of the man blackmailing her, and the very real and possibly monstrous way her body is changing. Using body horror as a lens to examine self is also a tried and true horror trope, and the internal nature of Noon’s struggle in this regard is at odds with the external nature of the disasters happening around her in the real world.
And just to even all of this out—because what good is horror if there’s not something good as a contrast to give you something worth struggling for—is Noon’s burgeoning relationship with Covey. Although they start out as antagonists to each other—after all, Covey is carrying out her father’s dirty work at blackmailing Noon and keeping an eye on her and her mother—the girls naturally start to bond as they become who the other can rely on in the face of danger and the unknown. Given who her father is, Covey knows something about not liking who you are, and Noon begins to see the softer side that Covey keeps hidden.
They Bloom at Night is a worthy second effort from a voice to watch out for in the field of YA horror. I was both spooked and enthralled as I was drawn into the waterlogged town of Mercy. Tran’s horror is creeping and relentless, and perfect for fans of environmental horror. Don’t be afraid to add this to your list this summer for some summer scares.
