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A review by hopebrasfield
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
5.0
Incredible. Manages to be deep in both its politics and emotional world building while staying rooted to the plot-driven story itself.
I cannot imagine what it's like to be able to write like this. Reminded me of other favorite authors, too.
Would recommend to anybody and everybody and then please ask that you come and talk to me about it so I can remember the book through you.
(Quotes hidden beneath spoiler tags below, just in case!)
"If Vern could ever be said to have a religion, that would be it: the bigness of it all, the mutability. [...] Even conservative estimates--ten million to fourteen million active species--suggested a world too vast for containment. God, if there was one, was that vastness."
"People were always doing this, convincing themselves their bad feelings were nothing. They talked themselves into danger, into Cainland, into Sherman's fold. Was it really so much easier to pretend everything was good than to face the possibility that it wasn't? Folks fell as madly in love with the illusion of truth as they did with truth proper."
"Loving, worshipping, and bowing 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 grasped on instinct."
"It was easy to make someone into a hero when they were gone, to ascribe to them infinite potential."
"Giovanni's Room was only one book, there were thousands and thousands more, maybe even a million. Perhaps in one of them there was the answer, the answer to it all."
I cannot imagine what it's like to be able to write like this. Reminded me of other favorite authors, too.
Would recommend to anybody and everybody and then please ask that you come and talk to me about it so I can remember the book through you.
(Quotes hidden beneath spoiler tags below, just in case!)
"If Vern could ever be said to have a religion, that would be it: the bigness of it all, the mutability. [...] Even conservative estimates--ten million to fourteen million active species--suggested a world too vast for containment. God, if there was one, was that vastness."
"People were always doing this, convincing themselves their bad feelings were nothing. They talked themselves into danger, into Cainland, into Sherman's fold. Was it really so much easier to pretend everything was good than to face the possibility that it wasn't? Folks fell as madly in love with the illusion of truth as they did with truth proper."
"Loving, worshipping, and bowing 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 grasped on instinct."
"It was easy to make someone into a hero when they were gone, to ascribe to them infinite potential."
"Giovanni's Room was only one book, there were thousands and thousands more, maybe even a million. Perhaps in one of them there was the answer, the answer to it all."