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sherigodmother 's review for:
Sorrowland
by Rivers Solomon
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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.
I’m writing this review about a month after reading this book, and as someone with an absolutely horrible memory, at this point I’m mostly going off of vibes.
Generally, I have said that I will love anything Rivers Solomon writes. This is true of Sorrowland as well, for the most part.
The writing is lush and beautiful, as always. Solomon’s descriptions are some of my absolute favorites. Vern is a complex character, even before her physical changes start to change her. She’s strong but also young and impulsive at the beginning. She makes bad choices and she makes mistakes and she does the best she knows how to do.
Her relationship with her sexuality, her guilt and shame regarding her attraction to women, are extreme but certainly ring true even for those who weren’t raised in a cult.
Cainland and its symbolism for the atrocities that the US has committed (and still commits) against minority communities, particularly Black communities, is a blunt object beating the reader over the head - but maybe we need that. Clearly, being subtle isn’t getting through to people.
Fungus-horror is apparently my favorite sub-genre these days, and Sorrowland is certainly no exception.
I do want to mention that I was VERY upset by the graphic sex scene with the spirits of two AIDS victims - it felt unnecessary, gratuitous, and in bad taste. I am absolutely willing to admit that maybe I missed something here, but I actively was extremely upset with this scene. I love this author, but I took off .5 points for this scene alone.
In the end, I feel that this book is so important and hauntingly beautiful and I would recommend it, with a caveat for the above scene.
Rules, most of the time, favored not what was right, but what was convenient or preferable to those in charge.