Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

22 reviews

maisierosereads's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

<a href="https://maisierosereads.wordpress.com/2021/05/05/review-sorrowland-by-rivers-solomon/">Read my full review on my blog!</a>

 
From the blurb and list of content warnings above, you can probably tell already that Sorrowland is a challenging book on many levels. All of the difficulties faced by the main character, Vern, and the other characters are rooted heavily in not just Black history, but the present. It is definitely a book to take your time with, but that is not to say reading it isn’t enjoyable. Rivers balances the ‘dark’ themes, suspense, mystery, and trauma with many beautiful moments. Their beautiful writing style shines through in even the darkest points, too.

Vern grew up in a commune – the Blessed Acres of Cain – which was once a Black nationalist group but is now a religious cult. The book opens with her giving birth alone in the woods after running away from the commune, and follows several years of her life as she tries to keep herself and her twins alive without any support or resources, while being stalked by the fiend, and with her body changing in very unexpected ways.

Vern is such a well-developed character. Not all of her decisions are likable as such, but they are understandable given her trauma and her circumstances. I was completely gripped by her storyline, and emotionally rooting for her to succeed. Every aspect of her character – young, Black, albino, partially-sighted, sapphic, intersex – impacts her personality and the book’s plot in a very organic way. Her experience with her body’s metamorphasis is queer to the very core, but also reflective of chronic pain and disability. The joy of transformation mixed with the unease that comes from not fully understanding why your body is changing and why you are in pain is an experience that I think many readers – particularly queer and trans disabled readers – will be able to relate to.

I was also really impressed by how Rivers considered every small detail of how Vern’s twins would be affected by their non-traditional upbringing. Howling and Feral know a lot about survival and the natural world from a very early age, but being raised genderless in the woods away from society and technology would of course have a huge impact on their perspective on the world. Their names alone are testament to their relationship with nature – and, sidenote, those names and the reasons they were chosen are perfect. There was one line in particular involving cloacas which summed that up brilliantly for me, but which I wouldn’t want to spoil by sharing here. I also absolutely loved the way Rivers showed that despite their early childhood being very challenging, Howling and Feral were incredibly resilient and ultimately thrived – not despite but because they were raised by a queer disabled Black single parent.

It was really obvious to me, as a primarily character-driven reader, that Rivers paid a lot of attention to developing every single side character. I can’t go into much detail without spoiling some frankly spectacular plot developments, but from characters with minor appearances, to love interests, to the main antagonists; the personalities and motivations Rivers gave them made them feel very human (even when on some levels, not all of them were very human).

Yet all of this character work wasn’t at the expense of plot in the slightest; the plot was also well-developed, perfectly paced, and came to a very satisfying conclusion.

Overall, Sorrowland is a truly amazing work of literature. I knew going into this novel that Rivers Solomon was a talented writer (as I’ve mentioned before, faer debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts is one of my favourites) but I still wasn’t prepared for how thoroughly this book would exceed all of my expectations. I can’t recommend this book highly enough for fans of any and all of the genres it encapsulates. Rivers Solomon deserves a massive congratulations and all of the support the book world has to give!

If you don’t have a copy of Sorrowland already, you can:


And when you’re reading it, please feel free to message me to scream about it! 

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reviewsandreadathons's review

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

There is a lot here to dissect and think about. It’s definitely a book that will benefit from a second reading but the first one was powerful. 
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