Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
Hardcover, 368 pages
Published May 4th 2021 by MCD
This is my third Rivers Solomon novel and they have one very strong connection. They defy easy and typical genre definitions. On the surface, there is always some kind of easy commercial pitch, in the Unkindness of Ghosts it was a novel in the well-worn genre of Generation ships. It ended up having more in common with Butler’s Kindred than Heinlein’s Orphans in the Sky. The Unkindness of Ghosts is a surreal masterpiece, it took this space nerd a little time to accept the unreality of that novel and once I did the universe of that novel opened up. The longer I thought about the book and the more distance I had from reading my respect for it grew.
Solomon is a writer who creates deeply thoughtful fiction. As activists, we are taught to envision the world we wish to see, not the one forced on us daily. Sorrowland is a product of a writer who clearly decided they are writing the world as they envision. Solomon’s bio says they are a writer who writes about life in the margins.
It is clear from the dust jacket cover that they were “Born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an Archipelago off the coast western coast of a continent.” This was not said to be cute, or to signal radical views it is clearly the author’s heart felt position. Anyone reading this novel can FEEL that this author writes their truth and has zero fucks to give if that is not for you.
Sorrowland is a radical novel, sure it is gothic, it is horror, science fiction, and fantasy. It is all those things but at the core, it is the most radical of coming-of-age stories. It comes from such a fresh, thoughtful, and intensely unconformist place that I hesitate to imply that I understand it. I felt many things reading Sorrowland, I was moved by it and yet I feel from my position I have only seen the parts of the iceberg above water. It is not every novel that is able to comment on race, gender and personal identity, sexuality, misogyny, racism inherent in the American system, Well-intentioned but misguided radicalism, colonialism, religion, the state experimentations on people of color and do it all while telling a coming of age story of a teenage mother.
Before I get into why, let me say I went into this reading experience cold, based on the strength of the author. This is a five-star book so I recommend it 100%. So if you don't even want a hint of anything stop here.
Sorrowland is the story of Vern, she has just escaped from Cainland, an off-the-grid compound formed by black radicals decades before she was brought there by her afro-punk mother. 15 years old and pregnant with twins Vern escapes into the woods. Surviving outside of civilization she raises her children Feral and Howling for a couple of years. It gives the first act of this book a fairy-tale feeling. The second act brings Vern and the kids back into society that is where much of the commentary comes from. The third act is bananas in all the right ways. The novel almost explodes into something that frankly I didn’t really see coming like a superhero origin story.
It was a bold choice-making Cainland a product of the radical black revolutionary movement, of course, we learn that they were still being exploited by the system. There is a moment early in the book when a young girl who escapes is returned by a judge that tips off Vern and the reader that the system is protecting these radicals for some reason. 160 pages later Vern admits that she knows what COINTELPRO is and that it is taught in the Cainland schools.
“When they weren’t outright murdering and framing dissidents, they were orchestrating their deaths and downfalls using undercover agents.
It was one of the reasons Eamon started forbidding folks from leaving the compound. It was to protect against spies, informants, and provocateurs. He’d enforced a no- or limited contact rule with outsiders because feds lurked everywhere. Vern thought of the compound’s single phone, the one in his office, so other Cainites wouldn’t have their phones bugged.
Vern quaked as the truth of it hit her. His edicts weren’t defenses against cops but ways to concentrate power in his hands.”
The blessed Acres of Cain was Psyop. Meant to control and exploit the radical as a means to create weapons in the form of superhumans. There is some pseudo-science involving fungus but the nitty-gritty of it was less important to me than the themes that fill the novel. Vern’s discovery of never before felt freedom opens her mind to the world.
The early chapters in the woods don’t have the action of the final act but they are the foundational elements of Vern’s coming of age.
“I like the woods,” she said. “In them, the possibilities seem endless. They are where wild things are, and I like to think the wild always wins. In the woods, it doesn’t matter that there is no patch of earth that has not known bone, known blood, known rot. It feeds from that. It grows the trees. The mushrooms. It turns sorrows into flowers.”
Of course, Vern’s journey is one all non-conformists can relate to. Coming of age in a world where the evil and wrong are clear to you, but not the mainstream is painful. Vern was taught to question what she sees. America and apple pies are not what she sees. Divorced from society at a young age, and raising children outside of it all she sees through it as clear as glass.
“What turned babies, fragile and curious, into Shermans? Into Ollies? Into men who could not interact with a new thing without wanting to dominate it?
What order of events did Vern need to disrupt in the lives of the millions upon millions who woke up every morning proud to be Americans? What made someone love lies?
She saw that cursed flag on the hunter's T-shirt and wondered if he know about the glut of traumas that define this nation's founding. Had he fallen so in love with the myth of belonging that he thought the corpses of his imaginary foes were worthwhile sacrifices toward barbecues, megachurches, bandannas, and hot dogs?
The primary freedoms this nation protected were the ones to own and annihilate.”
Sorrowland is defiant fiction, radical in its response to all that smoke. One of the most beautiful asides happens late in the book. Vern’s children Howling and Feral are like many children, her teachers. She has to form them, teach them outside of all that. That blank slate and that ability for humans to rise above is one of the things the novel teaches us.
“Loving, worshipping, and bowing down 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 grasp on instinct.”
We seek that connection and it is not our fault that connection often grips us at a young age. Vern is a character who is a victim of experiments. Common enough trope for a Hero who ends doing battle with superpowers against evil. Vern’s journey is something new fresh and original because the journey is the work of a singular voice. One uniquely able to deconstruct all the bullshit we accept as mainstream. It is a hell of a thing.
I found Vern’s words very inspiring indeed.
“Ollie and those like her wanted people to think their power was eternal, but even gods died. Empires, too. Continents shifted. Nations came. Nations went. Castles became ruins. I’m going to fight them.”
Fight on Rivers Solomon, and you have this reader locked in.
