Ripped Up the Middle in Two by Viggy Parr Hampton
Horror Humor Hunger Press (July 29th, 2026)
Reviewed by Adam Allen
Ripped Up the Middle in Two is not just a novel but a guttural howl of rage and frustration that will shake you to your very core. It’s funny, it’s infuriating, and it’s horrifying as hell. Viggy Parr Hampton has created a world that is so realistic, with characters you believe you could encounter on a walk through the neighborhood, that when the supernatural arrives, it makes it all the more disturbing.
Sadie has moved to suburban Savannah, Georgia, with Cash, her husband (an infinitely slapable character), newborn daughter Holly, and wonderful German Shepherd/Poodle mix Tater Tot (who often steals the show). The neighborhood women (“Yoga Moms” as Sadie calls them) are cliquey and picture-perfect, while Sadie’s experience as a new mother is decidedly more realistic. Lack of sleep, little help from her partner, the pain of recovering from a major medical procedure, and postpartum depression all come together to create a tidal wave of stress and anguish.
Worse yet, a pathway suddenly appears on Sadie’s daily walks, leading to a strange tree with a small door at the bottom. All manner of bones and dead creatures scatter the ground before it. Of course, this pathway only appears when she’s alone, and any recordings or pictures she takes disappear when she tries to show them to Cash or her friend. As the weird occurrences escalate and Sadie’s increasingly fraught mental state worsens, the reader is treated to a Shirley Jackson-level tale of the power of belief and sanity.
In Hampton’s novel, normal and mundane collide with the strange and uncanny. Anyone who has lived those first few months with a new baby knows that reality takes on a repetitive cycle of feedings and changings and not even knowing what day it is, and Hampton uses that to great effect in this novel. Everyday activities are infused with a sense of danger even when it isn’t clear where the threat is coming from.
We are treated to a few extremely frightening and memorable scenes set during that “am I awake or still asleep” time that add to the question of what is real and what is imagined.
Ultimately, this culminates in a downward spiral that leaves you feeling not unlike Sadie herself, and that is the whole point. We don’t have a lot of novels that really look at the realities and, frankly, horrors that come with becoming a parent. It’s filled with joy and wonder, of course, but it’s also incredibly hard, especially in a society where women are told that this is their identity now, and the physical and emotional pain that comes with it are burdens to bear silently and without complaint. Hampton does an incredible job of showing this in a real way, but one that consistently entertains and engrosses at the same time, which is quite an accomplishment.
