Sorrowland – by Rivers Solomon

As soon as I heard about Sorrowland, I was immediately hooked by the promise of a genre-bending narrative, themes of queerness and social justice, of systemic oppression and eldritch mutations. Besides, reading everything by Rivers Solomon is one of my long-established plans.

Synopsys

Vern is a teenager fortuitously escaped from the Blessed Acres of Cain, a hyper-religious Black separatist community where she had been forced to marry the cult leader, Reverend Sherman. She finds refuge in the wilderness, where she gives birth to twins whom she names Howling and Feral.

Despite adapting with surprising resourcefulness to her new life in the woods, Vern is still tormented by “hauntings” – fearsome hallucinations that she used to see as a sign that Sherman was surreptitiously drugging the congregation, but that, instead of vanishing, are getting more and more intense now that she’s on her own. She’s also continuously threatened by the lurking presence of a mysterious individual she calls the Fiend, who she believes is stalking her on the behalf of the Reverend.

As time goes on, Vern undergoes a number of physical mutations that are increasingly hard to ignore or explain away: not only she seems to be endowed with superhuman strength and prodigiously fast healing, now bizarre growths are also sprouting out of her skin.

One night, she crosses paths with a biker named Ollie; the two quicky get romantically involved, and for a brief moment Vern believes she might have found some comfort and companionship – only to find out that Ollie is no less that the Fiend herself; the revel that leads to a violent confrontation, that ends with Vern leaving Ollie for dead.

Vern leaves the woods, hoping to track down Lucy, a long-lost childhood friend and first crush. While her aim proves fruitless, as Lucy is nowhere to be found, she’s able to get in touch with her aunt Bridget, who is also determined to figure out whatever is going on in Cainland and promptly offers Vern all her help and support.

She also introduces her to Gogo, a queer (or to use a more accurate term, wikte) Lakota activist and paramedic, who takes care of Vern’s physical state and even figures out that he symptoms are caused by a fungal infection one that should by all means have been lethal, but that has instead developed a symbiotic relationship with Vern’s body.

While Vern’s mutations and hauntings escalate rather than relenting, to the point that almost her entire body ends up covered with an exoskeleton, she somehow manages to get some control over both; she realises that her hallucinations are no less than memories of personal and historical traumas, brought to her by the fungus and now inhabiting her body and mind.

Vern seems to have found a welcoming refuge for herself and her children, and is even building what looks like a truly loving relationship with Gogo, but her past is still out to get her: Ollie, who’s actually still alive, breaks into Bridget’s home, leading to a high speed chase and to a final confrontation where secret Government plots are revealed, and Vern’s newly mastered fungal powers come into play.

Analysis

Style – Written in third person limited, Sorrowland follows Vern’s point of view, getting us immersed in her experience in all its raw intensity. Given what’s later revealed as the nature of her powers, her individual experience is at time mixed with her people’s memories, that are however rendered as vividly as her own.

The story is enhanced by its powerful, visionary writing, that doesn’t shy away from brutality, and is deeply rooted in the raw physical sensations that are essential to Vern’s experience.

Plot Structure – The book is divided into three parts, named respectively Kingdom Plantae, Kingdom Fungi and Kingdom Animalia, that focus respectively on Vern’s time in the woods, on her coming to terms with her condition, and on the final confrontation. Each section is fairly distinct in tone pacing, in a way that is however functional to build a crescendo from the spaced out eeriness of the beginning to the action-packed ending.

As for the plot itself, I must say at times it seems to suffer under the weight of its content. Especially in the second half of the novel, the focus is so heavily shifted on delivering a message that narrative consistency somehow is sacrificed in the process, with Vern just “getting” the underlying mystery on instead of figuring it out in a believable way.

Setting – Set in nowadays America, the novel offers a fairly tangible representation of a few distinctive spaces: the almost timeless, at once raw and darkly magical atmosphere of the woods later gives way to a more familiar reality made of diners and homes stuffed with books. As a looming backdrop, Vern’s memories also take us back to the claustrophobic reality of the cult’s compound.

If the setting at large is based on our own world, we can see Solomon’s creativity as a SFF writer both in the portrayal of Vern’s mutation, and in the web of secret plots and conspiracies that are influencing our characters’ destinies. While the latter element is remindful of basically any techno-thriller you can think of, the former is more unique in weaving together heavy symbolism, body horror, and superheroistic tropes.

Characters – Vern, our protagonist, is an outcast in many ways: she’s African-American, but her albinism marks her as different from her own community; the poor eyesight that comes with it is treated seriously in its consequences, and while it doesn’t stop Vern from being a proud and resourceful character, it is a significant impediment in her daily life (among other things, she has no chance to learn how to read until she’s given the visual aids she needs… which apparently nobody thought she deserved back at the compound). She’s also attracted to women, and strongly hinted to be intersex, which is especially damning when living among a hyper-religious group.

Now, sitting at the intersection of a number of minority groups does not define Vern’s entire essence, but it surely has a major influence on both her personality and her fate, and as such it must be highlighted. She’s described as determined to make every moment of her life a rebellion, but her rebelliousness isn’t born of lofty ideology, nor of sheer teenage angst; instead, thrown into an environment that seems to be designed to despise her and oppress her from all sides, Vern adopts rebelliousness as a basic sign of vitality and resilience. She’s not necessarily a likable character, but she’s definitely a well designed one, even more so in her roughness.

She has, as expected, a complex relationship with her own motherhood – which has been forced on her, but which she doesn’t reject. She viscerally loves her babes, but she’s not always the most responsible, and given her peculiar condition she often risks to hurt them.

Given everything she goes through, it’s also easy to forget she’s a teenager – fifteen when she’s forced to marry, nineteen at the end of the story – which also prompts a reflection on how girls who belong to marginalised groups are not only forced to grow up too fast, but casually regarded as more adult than they are.

Other characters aren’t as fleshed out – not just because we don’t delve deep into their point of view, but because in most cases they are mainly featured to fulfill a role in Vern’s own story. Other than the kids, who have their names speak for themselves, the one we get to see more closely is Gogo, who plays a supporting role both in taking care of Vern’s health, and in showing her the possibility of genuine romance and respectful sexuality. She also takes the chance to describe what wikte means for the Lakota, offering some perspective of what transgender identities may mean for a different culture.

Themes – Under the guise of a science-fictiony horror, Sorrowland is a book about historical traumas, personal and collective identities, and the messy relationship one can’t help but have with both.

It deals, of course, with the history of Black people in the US, but in doing so it tackles the possible ambiguities to which marginalised communities aren’t necessarily immune: Cainland, in fact, is built around the righteous claim to liberate its members from the oppression of a racist society, however it has no regard for gender equality, and it is based on the draconic imposition of traditional religious tenets.

It gets more complex than that: because even once disentangled empowerment from trauma, noble ideals from oppression, both personal and collective identities are still the offspring of both. In Vern’s case – the very children she loves are the result of a deeply violent and abusive relationship; her developing powers are caused by secret experiments to which she was subjected, and which were meant to build supersoldiers , but she learns to embrace them and to use them for good. The memories that haunt her are tragic in themselves, and at times literally painful to bear, but they are also her history, and have become a part of herself.

Alongside with that comes an additional theme of embracing what’s normally considered monstruous and grotesque, which is dear to the sensibility of queer culture. Vern’s acceptance of her fungal mutations goes hand in hand with her sexual awakening, that is depicted in all its shameless joy.

Overall Thoughts – Sorrowland is an ambitious book, charged with meaningful messages and a palpable urge to share them. As I mentioned, such an urgency may get in the way of a more logical storytelling, however building a neatly structured thriller was clearly never the main goal of the novel. All in all, the novel is admirable for the power of its symbolism, as well as for the crude beauty of its writing.