This pattern through the novel – Main Story, then Character Poem, then Character Backstory, repeat ad nauseam – might have worked, had the main story been stronger.
The progressively awful living conditions in this writers’ retreat are returned to between each character’s respective poem/short story. Each character with a poem and story to tell throughout the novel apparently answered a mysterious advertisement to attend an isolated retreat for writers. The backbone of Haunted that ties each poem and short story together is a horrific three-month-long “Writers’ Retreat”. **trigger warning** this review mentions some extreme and horrific aspects of the book, including miscarriage.
Haunted is a series of short stories and poems, loosely related insofar as each is written from the perspective of different member of a group of degenerate sociopaths locked together in a masochistic “Writers’ Retreat”.
