- Mahogany S.
- Wednesday, July 27, 2022
"Going against tended to end more rightly, more justly, than going with. People were wrong. Rules, most of the time, favored not what was right, but what was convenient or preferable to those in charge."
We begin the book with Vern, who is pregnant and living in the woods after having escaped from Cainlaind - a cult like religious compound where she was raised. There is a shadowy figure hunting her and she is desperate not to return to her family. After spending four years living in the woods, she decides it's time to find her best friend who left Cainland before her. Her journey out of the woods and back into civilization is fraught with danger and unknowns. Vern works to protect herself and all those important to her as she learns more about the drastic changes her body is going through.
Sorrowland is not your typical horror story. The challenges of living in the woods and later interacting in a society she doesn't understand are all different types of horror for Vern. Little by little, you are given parts of the story of Cainland and the people living there. The ideas about the lengths governments will go to to experiment are not as far fetched as you might think when you consider the Tuskeegee Airmen or Henrietta Lacks. Sorrowland also explores racism in the United States in a broad sense through the treatment of its characters. This is a great book to read if you want your worldview challenged. It's also an enjoyable horror story that starts off with a bang and continues delivering periodic shocks through the end.
MCD 2021
Format: Book, eBook, eAudiobook
Vern gives birth to twins and raises them away from the influence of the outside world. But something is wrong-not with them, but with her own body...A genre-bending work of Gothic fiction that wrestles with the history of American racism.
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