kvmfollow.blogg.se

Considering what happens (view spoiler), Ollie was too inconsistent a villain to spearhead it, and she never felt like the best representative for her cause. It wasn’t as important as Vern’s transformation, her relationships, and survival I don’t think this focus is wrong, but the ending had intrinsic ties to all these elements. The ending felt very rushed for the slow exploration of its beginning and middle. Similarly, Cainland existed in a negative space, referred to and learned of, but without descriptive details to give it texture (its physical layout, its architectural style, its number of residents, etc.) (view spoiler) There were instances early on where she would leave her defenseless babies alone in the woods (view spoiler) and they would be okay until it was convenient for the narrative for them not to be. The book is wholly driven by her, almost to the point where people and places don't exist until she arrived at or returned to them. Such careful time was taken to establish Vern and her circumstances. All matters brought up were valid and relevant to the story being told. This book accomplishes much in its commentary. It is reclaiming power and exacting justice. Vern's strange transformation is not all weakness, but developing strength - not all haunting, but connecting with truth and history.

These ghosts speak to a secret history at Cainland, a history tied intimately to what is happening to Vern - a history of American medical abuses against the black community that began on the enslaved.īut, while this is tragic, Rivers Solomon's book is not a tragedy. Among her symptoms, she sees ghosts both familiar and foreign, friendly and cruel. Her body changes in strange ways, at first benign, but progressively worsening. She has to birth twins on her own, keeping on the move in a forest filled with uncertainty and danger.Īs time passes - time dedicated solely to their survival - Vern becomes sick. She leaves at just fifteen, pregnant by Cainland's leader, the reverend she was forced to marry regardless of her age, her sexuality, or her educational deficits from a community ill-equipped to accommodate her disability (her near-blindness). We follow Vern, a young girl raised in an all-black religious compound (aka cult) called Blessed Acres or, more commonly, Cainland, just as she makes her escape. Set in the USA, a country built on slavery and where racism remains rampant, the horrors main character Vern faces are consistent with those historically faced by black Americans that continue to this day.īut, being a gothic sci-fi novel, these points on American history and life are punctuated and reinforced by a supernatural element~ Sorrowland is a book about the exploitation and perceived disposability of black bodies worldwide, but especially in America.