A Veritable Household Pet by Viggy Parr Hampton
Horror Humor Hunger Press (January 2026)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Viggy Parr Hampton is a force to be reckoned with in her medical-body horror novel, A Veritable Household Pet. It’s a blistering indictment of patriarchal power and a tragic story of the nightmare that is the theft of autonomy and identity, a quiet and constant terror women know all too well.
Darla Gregory had a lobotomy at eleven years old, and like so many women forced into this “treatment” with the promise of improved mental health (behavior), she was never the same. Her sister becomes her reluctant keeper as tragedy after tragedy befalls the family in an endless, living nightmare.
Told through the sisters’ dual perspectives, the story unfolds as a chronicle of woes. Hampton’s ingenious depiction of the barbarity of lobotomies and the procedures’ catastrophic impact is sharp as a blade, making for an unputdownable read.
A Veritable Household Pet is infuriating and tragically evocative. Readers can’t help but put themselves in Darla’s shoes. She’s a terrified child punished for her fear of vomiting, emetophobia, and eventually rejected by everyone she knows, including her parents. She’s kept away from neighbors, never to be seen. I found myself thinking of Rosemary Kennedy, who suffered a botched lobotomy in 1941 at just twenty-three years old and was left unable to speak or walk properly ever again. She was institutionalized for life. Though Darla lives with a caretaker and her sister, she’s very much imprisoned, unable to fend for herself, distinguish right from wrong, or communicate effectively. She is trapped in her body without control of it. This claustrophobic horror will make readers tear through the pages, frenzied by the need-to-know-more thrill that the best books conjure.
Shame is such an accelerant in A Veritable Household Pet and explains so much of the novel’s most horrific, yet historically accurate, moments. That’s what makes this book so terrifying: there’s no monster under the bed or demon lurking in the dark; the ultimate evil is the persecution of women and the dehumanization of those deemed mentally ill.
It’s also what makes the story feel so believable, as if you were reading the most traumatizing real-life memoir.
For fans of A. Rushby’s Slashed Beauties, The Lamb by Lucy Rose, and V.C. Andrews. A Veritable Household Pet might be one of the most important horror books you’ll read all year.
