The young adult horror novel begins,
“My eyes are gone.

Figures.

I stare into the mirror in the girl’s locker room for a full two minutes, examining the new blackness in the eyeholes of my mask. Then I wait another minute before I jam a finger two knuckles deep into my eye socket.

Nothing there. I should be scrambling my own brains.

Question of the day: What’s stranger–trying to scramble my own brains, or wishing I could?”

---

Cat is trapped in her school; she doesn’t know how she got there, or when she and her classmates will be able to leave. The school contracts and expands with each breath it takes, it’s more alive then most of Cat’s peers.

Cat is a high school student who draws the kind of artwork that makes people concerned, and receives relentless bullying. At home she leads a mostly normal life, which consists of hanging out with her best friend Jeffrey, drawing, and watching her mom maintain an expansive Bonsai tree collection. That is until she wakes up with a mask and no memories.

Cat’s classmates are pitted against each other, separated by the two groups they formed: The Changed and The Unchanged. Cat’s face is a stiff mask of a cat’s face, and her eye sockets are empty holes. Her best friend Jeffrey is partly made of cardboard, a crayon drawing for a face.

The chapters are short and easy to keep reading in one sitting. The pacing moves fast, so the novel feels so much shorter than it is. Each chapter alternates between the present and the past, as Cat slowly recovers her memories, and her story. Cat’s tale is flawlessly haunting, and makes you question what’s real and what she might be imagining.

The word Katzenjammer comes from the German Katze, meaning “cat”; and Jammer, meaning “distress”. Katzenjammer is often used to describe a hangover. The title of this book couldn’t be more perfect. Cat’s story is the nightmarish after-effects of the events revealed as she finds her memories.

---

The themes in this book are abundant and significant. The most prominent theme is masks. Cat and her “changed” classmates find themselves with masks fastened onto their faces and bodies, unable to be removed. Cat’s story provokes thinking about the masks we wear both visible to others, and hidden.

There are a lot of different kinds of relationships shown in this novel. The relationship between peers is one that forms for protection. Cat finds herself walking the hallways in a group she calls “the river.” Together they are protected. When they start to be killed off while trapped in the school, it’s still valuable to them to stay together for safety. There is also a romantic relationship that takes place, but is yet another reason to be bullied. Cat doesn’t feel like her relationship outweighs the consequences it creates. The relationship I found most interesting was between Jeffrey, and his older brother, Jake. Jeffrey and Jake are bonded as siblings without choice, but Jake is unreachable by his brother, and ends up framing him. It doesn’t make a difference to Jake if Jeffrey is his brother or not. Jake sabotages himself physically because he is unable to be a brother to Jeffrey, due to his social ranking and probable mental health issues.

Bullying is a huge theme in Katzenjammer. Cat suffers constantly, and no one comes to her rescue. The bullying and affects on Cat’s mental and physical health, as well as her education, might just be the real horror of this story. It’s almost too real to what some kids really do experience.

---

I was absolutely amazed by Francesca Zappia’s other novels: Eliza and her Monsters, and Made You Up. The thing I found most masterful in all three of Zappia’s books I’ve read is the heartbreaking plot twists. Made You Up is one of the very few books that made me feel so sad to the point of almost crying, almost. Greymist Fair, Francesca’s newest work, will be publish on March 28th of 2023.