![]() They cultivate its most pertinent elements into a cohesive narrative that, at its best, distills the gothic’s exploration of trauma and ecohorror’s penchant for body horror within the realist setting of an unethical government experiment that is reminiscent of the Tuskegee Study, Operation Paperclip, and others of its ilk. It’s a difficult novel to pin down categorically: its genre-bending sensibilities veer from gothic to ecohorror to cult thriller but Solomon adeptly blends this mix-match. Sorrowland’s readers shouldn’t expect straightforward horror or even horror-fantasy. Like their debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts and the Lambda Award-winning 2019 follow-up The Deep, Solomon’s newest novel analyses systematic oppression within a speculative framework. ![]() With her children in tow, together they learn the appalling truth behind Cainland and contest its ruthless human experiments. ![]() As her body alters and threats around her close in, she befriends Bridget and Gogo, a Lakota winkte woman (a term akin to transgender). ![]() When Vern eventually emerges from the seeming safe haven of the woods, her body begins to transform and the hauntings she experiences ever since she left Cainland escalate. Vern, the novel’s protagonist, is a black teenager running from an abusive past with her twin children. Rivers Solomon’s third novel Sorrowland begins with unsettling thrills and violence, and it does not let up. Through the woods, she flees from her husband, the Reverend Sherman, and from the cult-like settlement she grew up in. ![]()
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