Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks

 

This novel looks kinda like it's a Horror novel, but it's not--the closest thing I can think of is something like Magic Realism. A town where ghosts are part of the social fabric, a slaughterhouse and butchery that employs genetically engineered anthropomorphic pigs: There are obvious attempts at symbolism of various sorts here. The story isn't horrible, but the characters aren't really what I found to be engaging; the novel seems to be more interested in saying something (probably about letting the past be the past, mostly) than in telling a story, which is kinda the opposite of my preference, at least on that axis.