Reviews - Lovecraft Country

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2.82k reviews for:

Lovecraft Country

Matt Ruff

4.01 AVERAGE

bram_kwantes's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

bekah_path's review against another edition

5.0

So I really liked this book, demonic dolls and space travel and magic and 1950s Jim Crow era America - monsters came in some real and more fictional forms. It was an exciting adventure and I really liked all the turns of events.

janna_orr's review against another edition

5.0

I really enjoyed this book. I read it in under two weeks. I watched the show before I read the book and it is noticeably different, but I enjoyed both stories. The plot was very creative.

still65's review against another edition

4.0

A series of remarkable tales, all interconnected.
Thrilling, moving, and at times terrifying.
A brilliant work by another new master storyteller.
Highest recommendation.

zumiey's review against another edition

5.0

Lovecraft Country is less a love letter to the tales of Lovecraft and more a condemnation of the face of Western cosmic horror, a rebuttal to his every theme of racism, xenophobia, and unknown. The unknown can be horrifying, but also beautiful - the true horror is already known to us.

For those who are only vaguely acquainted with Lovecraft - dude was a major, major racist. Not only in real life, but the horror of 'racial impurity' drives most of his stories, the mingling of white people with explicitly black or black-coded cultish uneducated villains.

Matt Ruff takes the premise of Lovecraft, the terror of small town politics and homegrown cults, and rightly points out if someone was to be messing with summoning monsters, it's definitely going to be old white men who feel immortal and powerful.

Atticus Turner is a veteran reluctantly returning home after a strange letter from his estranged father that he has discovered relatives of Atticus' late mother. His father's obsession with her ancestry (against her will and with her distaste) has led him to Ardham, Massachusetts - in the heart of New England, the titular Lovecraft County. Make no mistake: New England was and is as racist as the south. If you've never heard of sundown towns, get ready.

Atticus is a genre-savvy reader of science fiction, fantasy, and of course Lovecraft. His mother told him the only thing she knew of her family was that they had fled Lovecraft Country after some terribly horrifying circumstances. Atticus' relationship with his father is bitter, complex, but loving, and he tiredly rounds up friends and family for a rescue trip - Letitia, the reckless daughter of a charlatan and good friend who invites herself along; and George, Atticus' hilarious sardonic uncle who's as genre-savvy as he.

The book is broken into individual stories, each from a different character's point of view, each delving into different aspects of horror. The cult, the haunted house, the curse, the shapeshifting, the unfamiliar planet. It runs through the course of Atticus' family as they all are forced to deal with horrifying monsters and environments, but the scariest monsters are white people. Their trips into white territory, and accompanying mobs and racial violence are far scarier than anything Lovecraft could ever put to paper.

I'm excited to see the television adaptation of this book. I think the episodic stories and ever-expanding cast of characters will work well for the setting. I was interested to see that they recast Caleb to be a woman - the monstrosity of white women to black men was not really examined in the book, so I think bringing that in will be strong (maybe on that note they may make Ruby a lesbian? That would be fantastic).

The book is funny, horrifying, and tightly wrapped in historical events.