Scan barcode
A review by holyteeth
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
fast-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I find myself repeatedly coming back to how, on the physical book, the back cover describes it as 'gothic'. It's not my biggest problem with the book, but it encapsulates well one of my primary issues with it: it felt, often, that it couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be and say.
On paper, the plot seems almost tailor made to be something I would love. It was not to be. I would not, under threat of gun, describe what I read as gothic, but I would also be hard pressed to tell you exactly what it was I read. Storygraph has it tagged as 'horror', and I suppose to a degree it's true. I think horror was the only consistent genre in a story that seemed to fluctuate between multiple subgenres, changing one every act, if not more often. That was not my biggest issue with the book, either; I can understand and respect that genres are ill-defined and fickle things. What really, really drove me nuts was the pacing.
Oh, the pacing! Sorrowland spans roughly 5 years of events, the first 4 of which happen within the first 80ish pages of the book. I am a firm believer that not everything needs to be a series, and I adore standalones, so believe me when I say that I truly think this book would have really benefited from being two or three books instead. It needed to slow down, and it needed to slow down considerably. I found it difficult to build an attachment towards half of the side characters, as they were there one moment and gone the next, and their relationships with Vern were never actually sold to me or developed to the point of me having feelings on them. Lucy, Ollie, Ruthanne- I only knew these characters were important to Vern because I was told they were important to Vern, and even with their stated importance to her most of them seemed to enter her mind only haphazardly, as an afterthought.It made things especially strange when it came to Ollie, who showed up maybe three times before being 'killed', an event which Vern had a lot of feelings on despite her relationship to Ollie being barely developed. It made things difficult when Ollie showed back up again later as a late game antagonist, because I just did not care for this character and thus the revelation had no payoff for me. With Ruthanne we barely got any context into who she was until the last few chapters of the book, where we get her backstory, and I found myself wondering 'what do I care about any of this?'. Lucy was a little better off, but still, with how important she was to Vern, I think she needed a lot more presence in the narrative.
The speed of it all was less 'fast paced' and more 'rushing'- it made everything feel choppy and volatile, with characters changing feeling and opinions in the span of a sentence, making decisions with no build up behind them and no preamble, and leaving the reader with absolutely no time to get to know any of it. By the time you registered something, it was already gone. The entire book was a big 'tell' with no 'show', and it got tiring very quickly. Often, the prose would turn into paragraphs of near soliloquys, which were nice at first - Rivers Solomon has a good prose voice - but by the end of the book had gotten so exhausting to constantly come upon that I found myself skipping past them, knowing I wouldn't actually miss anything important by not reading them. It was, frankly, quite heartbreaking. Solomon has a genuinely very unique, solid voice as a writer, and I really enjoyed it in the midst of so many books that all sound the same. But the unique voice was not enough to cover up the flaws in the craft.
For a horror novel, the sexual content in it was described with more detail and focus than the actual horror parts. It came late and felt out of place, starting only in the middle of the book, though there had been sex earlier on too- it was jarring to go from the sex being written as a passing implication to having page-long, detailed descriptions of the act. I can guess why that was the case, but the way other things in the narrative are handled makes me second guess.
Aside from the pacing, my other major gripe with the book is how it seemed to change the emotions it seemed to want to convey at the drop of a hat. There was no breathing room- there was not a second to stop and take in the scene before the energy in it had completely changed, sometimes in the span of a sentence. There were rarely any nice, calm or bonding moments, which made it difficult to appreciate the relationships between the characters, and when there were they were taken away mere seconds after. However, the biggest hit for me, and the part of the book I will unfortunately never be able to look past, was this:After many, many, many examples of how Vern's 'hauntings' were deeply, deeply distressing to her, causing her physical pain, breakdowns, panic attacks, and everything else, we come to a scene of her in a hostel, and there are two hallucinated dead bodies on the bed. She calls her love interest, who up until that point has been with her for many of those haunting and has seen first hand how they effect Vern, and has often been there to anchor her to reality. Vern calls her because she needs that very anchoring. However, as the bodies Vern is hallucinating slowly seem to stir and come alive and become aware of each other, what does Vern's love interest do as Vern is relaying all that to her? She starts jerking off. They proceed to have phone sex. The scene was so absurd, and I, personally, found the thought of randomly starting to masturbate on the phone with your partner while she tells you about something that has historically been harrowing to her, so incredibly cruel that I had to skip the rest of the chapter. And all that from a character who said she would never violate Vern's consent by watching her masturbate without permission. Okay.
Following the above spoiler, I found the handling of some of the social issues in this a bit... strange. I'm not of the belief that books always need to hand hold you and address all the bad things they speak of, but this novel was heavily a political one, drawing from America's and Europe's bloody and deeply racist history and not shying away from discussing the ways power is weaponized. Which is why I found it strange that not a single person seemed to even off handedly consider the fact that Vern was a child bride to a cult leader that had children at 15 years old. No one even lightly commented on it. For a story so centered around that commune slash cult, it really seemed weird to me that the ways that power was weaponized and abused in it was not more explored, and Vern herself, by the end of the novel, did not particularly feel like she had even slightly began to actually unpack any of it either.
All in all, I am just... at a loss about this book. It could have been so good, but it just was not, and upon finishing it I found, to my great dismay, that my only thought was 'thank god, I'm free'.
On paper, the plot seems almost tailor made to be something I would love. It was not to be. I would not, under threat of gun, describe what I read as gothic, but I would also be hard pressed to tell you exactly what it was I read. Storygraph has it tagged as 'horror', and I suppose to a degree it's true. I think horror was the only consistent genre in a story that seemed to fluctuate between multiple subgenres, changing one every act, if not more often. That was not my biggest issue with the book, either; I can understand and respect that genres are ill-defined and fickle things. What really, really drove me nuts was the pacing.
Oh, the pacing! Sorrowland spans roughly 5 years of events, the first 4 of which happen within the first 80ish pages of the book. I am a firm believer that not everything needs to be a series, and I adore standalones, so believe me when I say that I truly think this book would have really benefited from being two or three books instead. It needed to slow down, and it needed to slow down considerably. I found it difficult to build an attachment towards half of the side characters, as they were there one moment and gone the next, and their relationships with Vern were never actually sold to me or developed to the point of me having feelings on them. Lucy, Ollie, Ruthanne- I only knew these characters were important to Vern because I was told they were important to Vern, and even with their stated importance to her most of them seemed to enter her mind only haphazardly, as an afterthought.
The speed of it all was less 'fast paced' and more 'rushing'- it made everything feel choppy and volatile, with characters changing feeling and opinions in the span of a sentence, making decisions with no build up behind them and no preamble, and leaving the reader with absolutely no time to get to know any of it. By the time you registered something, it was already gone. The entire book was a big 'tell' with no 'show', and it got tiring very quickly. Often, the prose would turn into paragraphs of near soliloquys, which were nice at first - Rivers Solomon has a good prose voice - but by the end of the book had gotten so exhausting to constantly come upon that I found myself skipping past them, knowing I wouldn't actually miss anything important by not reading them. It was, frankly, quite heartbreaking. Solomon has a genuinely very unique, solid voice as a writer, and I really enjoyed it in the midst of so many books that all sound the same. But the unique voice was not enough to cover up the flaws in the craft.
For a horror novel, the sexual content in it was described with more detail and focus than the actual horror parts. It came late and felt out of place, starting only in the middle of the book, though there had been sex earlier on too- it was jarring to go from the sex being written as a passing implication to having page-long, detailed descriptions of the act. I can guess why that was the case, but the way other things in the narrative are handled makes me second guess.
Aside from the pacing, my other major gripe with the book is how it seemed to change the emotions it seemed to want to convey at the drop of a hat. There was no breathing room- there was not a second to stop and take in the scene before the energy in it had completely changed, sometimes in the span of a sentence. There were rarely any nice, calm or bonding moments, which made it difficult to appreciate the relationships between the characters, and when there were they were taken away mere seconds after. However, the biggest hit for me, and the part of the book I will unfortunately never be able to look past, was this:
Following the above spoiler, I found the handling of some of the social issues in this a bit... strange. I'm not of the belief that books always need to hand hold you and address all the bad things they speak of, but this novel was heavily a political one, drawing from America's and Europe's bloody and deeply racist history and not shying away from discussing the ways power is weaponized. Which is why I found it strange that not a single person seemed to even off handedly consider the fact that Vern was a child bride to a cult leader that had children at 15 years old. No one even lightly commented on it. For a story so centered around that commune slash cult, it really seemed weird to me that the ways that power was weaponized and abused in it was not more explored, and Vern herself, by the end of the novel, did not particularly feel like she had even slightly began to actually unpack any of it either.
All in all, I am just... at a loss about this book. It could have been so good, but it just was not, and upon finishing it I found, to my great dismay, that my only thought was 'thank god, I'm free'.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Pedophilia, and Sexual content
Moderate: Child death, Emotional abuse, and Racism
Minor: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Homophobia, Transphobia, Police brutality, and Lesbophobia