Cursed Book Club: The Haunted Vagina

Yes, you read that right, The Haunted Vagina by Carlton Mellick III is indeed a real book, that I managed to come across when I was browsing the internet and, yes, I did read it.

            Also, welcome to the closest thing to a series I’m likely going to start on this blog. I’m calling it “Cursed Book Club”, and it’s going to be talking about some of the cursed books I managed to come across. I’m assuming that most of these are going to be those books that get sharted out onto Amazon and are sold for like 99p. And The Haunted Vagina is the first instalment of Cursed Book Club.

            I feel like I need to explain myself, and how I came across this book. So, I watched a YouTube video that went onto the Reddit page “r/menwritingwomen” and after going there myself I managed to find it. It wasn’t like I was looking for anything shady, it was just there. There you go.

So, here are a few other titles from this same author: Satan Burger, War Slut, Sausagey Soldiers and The Egg Man.

The Haunted Vagina (THV), when I looked up its listing on Amazon, on the little bits where it mentions whether the book was on any charts, it was listed on the horror parody chart, so, when I first saw that this book existed on the r/menwritingwomen Reddit, I thought it was serious, but after seeing what it was charting on, that told me, “okay, it’s not a serious literary piece,” and that I shouldn’t be going into it with a serious literary eye.

Right from the outset, I knew this book was going to be a lot. Even if we ignore the title itself, the first line was, “I’ve been scared to have sex with Stacy ever since I discovered her vagina was haunted.”

There were also few bits throughout the book when I thought the punctuation didn’t seem right, or a sentence didn’t read as smoothly as it could have done. But I was also reading something called The Haunted Vagina, so what was I expecting.

I will mention, Mellick loved a dialogue tag – you know, the “he said” or “she said” bit that comes after speech. Like, dialogue tags are a necessary part of writing, but, if there are only two people talking, there doesn’t need to be a tag after absolutely every bit of dialogue. And there were parts of this books where that was the case. I’ve written just a little excerpt from early on in the book as an example.

 

“What the hell!” I screamed.

“Told you,” she said.

“What is that?”

“A ghost,” she said.

“What!”

“I’m haunted,” she said, touching her vagina and smiling.

“How did a ghost get in there?”

“I’m haunted,” she said.

 

        That’s what I meant. Things like that. There didn’t need to be “she said” after every time Stacy spoke, we could assume who is who after the first few lines, so long as sufficient dialogue tags had been used prior.

          I feel like most of the criticism I had could be put down to the fact it was a parody/pastiche kind of book, so it wasn’t meant to be that serious. But I did notice a few issues in formatting as well. Like there were some paragraphs that weren’t indented – why is this suddenly a proper review? And it was also prevalent when there was dialogue, like how there’s the whole new speaker, new line rule? It stuck to that, but it was inconsistent in its indentation of those new lines, sometimes opting to indent, sometimes not.

         The narrator referring to his own lower lip as crusty was refreshing. Usually, people refer to other people as crusty, not themselves, so I did appreciate that line.

          Now, on page six, it kind of started to read like, and I don’t want to be mean, it started to read like someone who maybe wasn’t the most talented writer. Here’s another quote:

 

“But she really wanted to sleep. It was late. Both of us worked the swing shift. We went into her studio apartment, the floor covered with laundry that she insisted was all clean, and stripped down to our shirts, underwear and socks. She was right. It was definitely a comfortable bed. It was the biggest, fluffiest bed I’ve ever been in.”

 

         There was no reference to where either of them worked prior to this exchange. So, while it was saying “yeah, we both worked the same shift”, it didn’t say where? Even if you’re going to be a trashy garbage book, at least give me something, make a little sense if you’re going to give me this background. Give me something, give me one dollar, please. Then a few pages later we get told that Stacy works in “one of the hipster clothing stores downtown”, so there’s that. And about halfway through the book, we learn Steve works in a call centre.

        Also, I understand why this ended up r/menwritingwomen, because what I’m about to read is a full paragraph. Like, it’s its own separate thing.

 

“I could see her cocoa nipples through her t-shirt.”

 

         Like, that was it. That was the paragraph. And it happens unprovoked.

         Also, what the author chose to give details to, like what they chose to expand on was really weird. Because there were parts where the author could have given us more details and characteristics of Stacy and Steve, but just didn’t. But then they also spent an entire page talking about how Steve used to give money to homeless people. Then at the same time, in chapter two, we get a whole-ass paragraph on the way that Stacy eats burgers from Carl’s Jr. Why? What was the reason?

         In the list of cute things that Stacy apparently does. On page 10, there is the fact that, “she licks her glasses clean before she reads”. Bitch, what? What kind of psychopath? It’s no wonder her coochie is haunted.

         Then about 20% into the book, a skeleton comes out of her vagina and starts to grow organs and skin in front of both Stacy and Steve as Steve tries to kill it. And then we get an exposition dump of the history of Stacy’s haunted body – which I feel was a missed opportunity to have Stacy tell Steve in real time – with dialogue – it could have fleshed out the characters a little. Also, I love how I’m trying to give critiques of things that would have improved this story of all things.

       But then we get another few pages in, and Stacy shaves Steve’s head, so he can go inside her vagina… No words…

         So, he goes, literally, inside of her, and then comes out in a whole world that’s apparently inside of her. So, go off girl, I guess. A little later, after Steve comes back out, she brings him a bunch of supplies and tells him that he’s going back in her and going to chart the world inside of her so that a book can be written about it.

       Steven ends up meeting this really pale girl, Fig, inside of Stacy, who takes Steve into this town where all the other people in Stacy live. Like, at this point I’m just recounting the story because I don’t know what to say about it. He says that Fig is like Jar Jar Binks, of all things – so that’s fun, I guess. Then he basically gets captured and turns into a creature like Fig. And then Stacy ends up cheating of Steve, because – to keep it PG – while Steve is inside of Stacy, Stacy gets pregnant from another man.

         And eventually, Steve is fully trapped, and we get an exposition dump for how the world inside of Stacy works, like how reproduction works – it’s all very weird.

        Then we end with another exposition dump when Steve talks through the walkie-talkie he brought into Stacy, to Stacy and we get the explanation that Fig was Stacy’s imaginary friend from when she was younger, and she figured that Fig and Steve fell in love, so she got pissed off so cheated on Steve with the first guy she could find so that she could drown this world in the man’s… cum… And then Stacy cuts Steve off mid-sentence, and that’s the end.

       This whole book screams, “I had a funny idea, started writing, but then had no idea where to take it.” Like… it started off weird, then just got progressively weirder. I felt like maybe it was meant to be shock value… But I just wasn’t shocked. It was, let’s not lie, stupid.

        Anyway, I don’t have some smart way to close what a trainwreck The Haunted Vagina was, so I’m going to leave this here.

        Okay, bye. 

(Okay, so this isn't the English cover, but it's the same cover still...)