Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Sorrowland

Intensely interesting read. Everytime I thought I knew where the story was going to always took a hard right, only for me to have all the clues and foreshadowing staring me right in the face. The author did an absolutely amazing telling of a strong -willed young women surviving the unique circumstances of her traumatic childhood and upbringing in a possible cult...but with Jeff Vandermeer twist. I admit I'm conflicted with the main character Vern. In so many ways she is written brilliantly and is an obvious outcome of her past experiences and sheer natured will...however at the same time I found it hard to call her "likable " which I do think is the authors whole point. She does have some growth and a self enlightened moment of understanding her lack of "emotional immaturity". Otherwise, you want it; it's in this book. POC rep? Check. LGBTQ+? Check. Strong female lead? Check. Drama? Check. Romance? Check. Spooky/supernatural occurrences? Check. Possible government cover ups? Check!

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queer_bookwyrm's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

5 ⭐ CW: (provided by the author) racism, misogyny, self-harm, sucidality, homophobia, animal death, sexual violence mentions, (provided by me) drug use/overdose mention, sex, body horror, medical experimentation

"I like the woods. In them, the possibilities seem endless. They are where wild things are, and I like to think wild always wins. In the woods, it doesn't matter that there is no patch of earth that has not known bone. Known blood. Known rot. It feeds from that. It grows the trees. The mushrooms. It turns sorrows into flowers."

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon is another incredible standalone that I'm probably never going to shut up about. So glad I started my year off with a nonbinary author. Solomon gave us albino rep, disability rep, queer rep, and indigenous rep.

We follow Vern, a vision impaired black albino woman, who is fleeing a Black religious compound known mostly as Cainland. Cainland was a commune created by Black separatists, and shun anything from the white man's world. Vern has been married off to their reverend, and has chosen to give birth to her twins alone in the woods at 15.

Vern is such a badass! She birthed twins alone and then decided to live in the woods with them totally self sufficient. She stays there, until she starts experiencing weird changes in her body since leaving the commune. Now she goes on a mission to figure out her past and what is really happening at Cainland. Suffice it to say we have a religious cult, government conspiracy, and medical experimentation similar to Tuskegee.

Solomon always does a fantastic job of bringing characters to life and making them feel like real people. Even Vern's children, Howling and Feral, have full personalities. They are so cute and honestly the comic relief this heavy book needed. Gogo was a great love interest and gave Vern some depth and softness.

I loved the concept of mushrooms, spores, and mycelium being used in this! Mushrooms as a super power! I'm loving all the mushroom-y things in media. Star Trek: Discovery uses a mycelial network to travel, and The Houseplant by Jeremy Ray uses mycelium as a way for different plants to communicate with each other. Also, we get some serious spicy bits in here 🔥🥵.

We get a lot of themes about choice, freedom, and the much needed criticism of the US. The US has committed so many atrocities and allowed them to happen. The United States is an occupational force on Indigenous land, and this book acknowledges that. Solomon points out to us how someone can become an extremist or be radicalized from severe disenfranchisement.

I may even reread this book at some point, it was that good. Read this book. Read Rivers Solomon in general.

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anna_23's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

From the first sentence onwards, "THE CHILD GUSHED out from twixt Vern’s legs ragged and smelling of salt" I was glued to the pages of Sorrowland. Following Vern, who just escaped a place where she experienced abuse and neglect for years, the so-called Cainland, being by herself running away from someone she named The Fiend while she has to ensure that her only second-old babies survive. The story unravels from there, showing us how Vern tries to survive the wilderness with her children and the realisations she makes about what has really been going on in Cainland and what these visions, "the Hauntings' ' actually mean.

The book explores the deep rooted violence Black people have been experiencing for centuries in the USA and what effects it has on Vern and the people around her. And showing ways how Vern is grappling as to how to resist all the systems, that have been set into place and heal from the pain that has been inflicted on her and other Black people. Also showing, how some people in marginalized groups will use their power they have over other people in the communities that might be part of several marginalized groups, to harm them instead of using it to fight against the oppressor.

The Good:

1) My favorite part of this novel was probably the characters. I just loved how real they felt to me, like they truly exist somewhere. Rivers Solomon was mostly able to tell a story with quite a lot of drama (drama could mean different things, but I mean that it had quite a bit of tragic/sad scenes + inter- and intrapersonal conflict) without ever really going into the melodramatic. While melodrama works in some stories, soap operas or rom coms for instance, in others it might make you feel distanced from the characters.
Solomon gave a detailed look at their characters, always taking time to show us exactly how the characters are reacting to the situation, showing their good and bad sides. It's clear throughout the whole novel but to give an example, towards the end, Vern watches her children read and feels jealous that they are able to read better than her- she wasn't taught how to read- and even feeling joyous when she is able to read a word that they can't. I just loved how Solomon took something like learning to read and showing us all the realistic feelings Vern has and how it affects her relationships. This kind of careful exploration of the characters' situations was just wonderful to read.

And by the way, the relationships between the characters are just as complex as the characters themselves. Vern and her relationship with her children, was one of the most interesting children/parent relationships, I have read.

With faers great character work, they were able to, just let their characters drive the plot, choosing the characters' complexities over an easy answer to move the plot along easily.

I think the way Solomon explored gender was also fantastic, probably one of the most interesting explorations I ever read. Exploring how they feel about their own gender and how the outside world affects those feelings, especially when completely seperated from the rest of society and ending the story in a place where the characters chose how to express their gender in a way that is right for them, not letting themselves be defined by our cis focused/heteronormativ world.

2) I love when fantastic aspects are used to explore the feelings of the characters, which was the case here. I won't go into detail as to what the fantastic aspects are because they are slowly and wonderfully revealed throughout the novel, but I loved how on one hand Solomon used them to showcase what a huge impact trauma has on someone and how hard it is to deal with the pains in your past and find a way to healing sometimes.

And on the other hand those aspects were used to explore the themes that I mentioned at the beginning. A theme, I feel like Solomon really 'enjoys' to explore in their novels, is the idea of a collective memory and burden, which was a theme that was well done through the way fae used the fantastical aspects.

3) And finally, the writing is soooo good. Every sentence is drenched with darkness, but also allowing softness into the text.
Here are some passages that just show how great the writing is:
"Vern didn't know what she wanted, she was a girl made of aches and she flung her body at the world in the hopes that something, anything might soothe the tendernesses."

"Loving, worshipping, and bowing down to folks who harmed you was written into the genes of all animal creatures. To be alive meant to lust after connection, and better to have one with the enemy than with no one at all. A baby's fingers and mouth grasp on instinct."

'It was summer, and the world was as bright as a lightning flash. Blue sky. Red dirt. Everything was set alight. Vern tried to cherish it, to turn toward the sun the way bluebells did, but Vern still lusted after the dark of the woods, where she was born, where her true self had been made."

The Bad

I honestly don't have much bad to say, but one thing I did not enjoy was how the action was written towards the end. In the earlier parts of the novel the action was written in a quiet, dark and gritty way but towards the end it felt more like James Bond/ Marvel like action scenes. While there is nothing wrong with that, and the scenes were well written, in my opinion, it did not fit in well with the rest of the novel and it started to pull me out of the story.

The Conclusion

Please, if you can deal with the more serious aspects of the novel, read this one. From its incredible writing to it's unique characters to the interesting plot, all of it was worth reading. There are even more great things to be said about this one, but I will leave it here for now. And I'm now so excited to read faer's other work and they for sure have the potential to be one of my favorite writers.

If you can and want to, I would also highly recommend the audiobook, read by Karen Chilton. They truly brought the story to life. The audiobook does not include the short Author's Note at the beginning, so I would recommend looking this one up, if possible.

Here are the trigger warnings the author provided themselves: "Note discussion and instances of racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicidality, and homophobia, inclusion of animal death and explicit violence, and references to sexual violence that have taken place off the page."

I love to hear if somebody has read this book and your thoughts and maybe recommendations of books that are similar!

And if you comment on the book, please use the right pronouns for the author which are fae/faer and they/them!

Content Warnings

solenekeleroux's review

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dark informative mysterious reflective tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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catapocalypse's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I can't afford more auto-buy authors, but I can't deny that Rivers Solomon belongs among them after this.

<i>Sorrowland</i> follows the pregnant Vern after she escapes into the woods from the cult-like compound, Cainland, where she grew up. She gives birth to her twins and raises them there for a few years, away from both the confines of Cainland and the world beyond that she fears and distrusts. But something is gradually going very wrong with her body, and a malevolent hunter threatens their hideaway, forcing Vern to brave the outside world in order to seek out the friend who escaped years earlier and answers about Cainland and what it has really been doing to her and the others living there.

I enjoy a good prickly heroine, and Vern is <i>very</i> prickly! She is also very messy, partly because of her stubbornness and fiercely strong will, almost annoyingly so. But I'd remind myself that she was only fifteen at the start of the book's narrative and had been put through a lot. She had every right to be angry at the world, as her journey reckons with deception and the people unwilling to look beyond it, the liberties people take with others' bodies and lives (especially Black ones), and the coldness of American society in general (particularly toward the marginalized), which makes the cold winter in the woods feel welcoming by contrast.

Despite the real and supernatural horrors, there is still love and even hope. The book surprised me in many ways, and I am already itching to reread it after having just finished it.

Content warnings provided by the author: "Note discussion and instances of racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicidality, and homophobia, inclusion of animal death and explicit violence, and references to sexual violence that have taken place off the page."

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emily_koopmann's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

3.75

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