The proposed idea behind gated communities is that they keep the horrors out; but all too often people overlook that those gates can also hide horrors within. 

 

Normally, I’d take you through the plot of this story just a little bit, but I honestly believe this book is best going in blind. The official blurb isn’t 100% accurate but it’s accurate enough to get you started. 

 

One thing the blurb does get correct is that this isn’t your usual haunted house story. The ghosts that haunt the Maxwell siblings are numerous: historical, generational, parental, personal, and maybe even supernatural. The lion’s share of the family’s burdens fell on Ezri, the eldest Maxwell sibling, who was different even apart from being black in a white-as-snow neighborhood. Even as kids the Maxwell siblings knew it wasn’t a good idea to be the only black spot on a white canvas in the suburbs of Dallas. It made for an unhappy childhood and an unhappy family. 

 

Rivers Solomon writes about race, queerness, childhood, and trauma in a very raw, almost poetic way. The prose in some passages reminds me of early Pahalnuik (think Invisible Monsters), with these repetitive phrases containing slight word changes that seem to hit harder each time they land. Model Home isn’t polite or refined. It isn’t pretty or kind. This book is about a horrible mother, discontented sisters, parental alienation, racism, homophobia, mental illness, child abuse and predation, pride in being black, but so much internalized hate for who you are apart from being black and where you came from. 

 

One of the main differences between a thriller and a horror is that horror asks us “what” is causing the conflict. In the case of Model Home, Rivers Solomon is asking us, “What isn’t causing all of this horror?” 

 

(Last note: So many snaps to Solomon for excellent LeGuin allusions and references! I swooned.) 

 

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. 

 

File Under: 5 Star Review/Disability Rep/Ghost Fiction/Horror/LGBTQ Horror/Literary Fiction/Supernatural Horror