Model Home by Rivers Solomon ( hardback )

The brittle and cracked story of a queer adult being called back to their childhood home. A home defined by affluence, image, and “Black excellence”, a home that tortured their family until it broke apart.

Rivers Solomon has a brilliantly disjointed narrative style that lends the book a feeling of urgency. You live in the main character’s mind and feel what they feel. Their joy, their pain, their dissociation and madness are felt with the breath and flow of every line.

As all good horror, the whole story works as a single writhing metaphor. While the story as a whole has something to say Solomon is also able to imbue each part of the whole with a sense of completion on its own. Whether it is the specter of the house at 677, the concept of being a Sliver, or the Omelas Child, each part of the story works independently of the others and becomes their own lurking character in the story.

If you are looking for a book dripping in blood, this might not be what you are looking for. Model Home, while it has its absolutely brutal sections, works with a horror that is much more human. More than sudden shocks, this book works to build a sense of dread that is real and terrifyingly familiar.

Lightly used. Never dog-eared.