Review by Booklist Review
Years ago, the gated community of Oak Creek Estates in suburban Dallas promised opportunity for the Maxwells, even if the neighbors balked at the presence of a Black family in the neighborhood. But shortly after their arrival at 677 Acacia Drive, the Maxwell family was plagued by unexplained phenomena, including mutilated animals, freak accidents, disappearing house guests, and sightings of a woman with no face. Genderqueer Ezri, the eldest sibling and seemingly primary target of the occurrences, was often blamed, even as they proclaimed their innocence. Decades later, Ezri and their two sisters return to their childhood home following their parents' mysterious deaths in the backyard. Police are ruling it a murder-suicide--but the Maxwell siblings know that the house killed their parents. Fueled by unreliable narrator Ezri's grief, Solomon's (Sorrowland, 2021) lyrical slow burn is a disquieting and disorienting rumination on heavy themes including racism, mental illness, gender dysphoria, and sexual abuse. The ambiguity of Ezri's reflections will keep readers turning the pages to find out what really happened to the Maxwell siblings, whose traumatic childhoods continue to haunt them long after they leave home. Solomon's genre-defying achievement subverts and reclaims the tropes of the gothic haunted house to create something wholly original and unforgettable.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"My life is a dark woods with a slasher in the midst," says Ezri Washington Maxwell, the protagonist of this eerie horror novel from Solomon (Sorrowland). Ezri, a highly educated, Black, autistic, intersex single parent, grew up in a predominantly white Texas suburb. Though they have doggedly tried to escape their background, they and their two sisters are forced by the deaths of their parents to reconvene in the family home in a classic haunted house setup. The substance of the horror stems from Ezri grappling with the recall of innumerable tortured moments spent within its walls. The first half of the book is stellar in its evocation of Ezri's emotional suffocation, past and present. Midway through, however, Ezri latches on to the image of themselves as the tormented child in the Ursula K. LeGuin story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," a literary reference that feels somewhat clunky. Meanwhile the intricate, shadowed layers of memory they have laboriously delineated shrivel in the spotlighting of a barely sketched villain. The consequences of evil are as multifaceted and sharp as shattered crystal, while evildoers are sledgehammers without nuance. This may be true enough in life, but it's a bit of a letdown in fiction. Still, the dazzling atmospherics and sharp-toothed point about race in America will draw readers in. Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Co. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A family tragedy occasions this startling reimagination of the haunted-house genre. Ezri Maxwell and their sisters, Eve and Emmanuelle, have begun receiving increasingly alarming texts from their mother. Or, rather, someone claiming to be their mother. When Ezri was a teen, admission to Oxford University granted them--Black, nonbinary, and neurodivergent--the ideal escape from the hostile, entirely white gated community outside of Dallas in which their parents, seeking upward mobility, made a home. Ezri's childhood was haunted by frightening, unexplainable occurrences for which they were often blamed, and they've been estranged from their parents since leaving home. The siblings have suspected for years that something dark, supernatural, haunts the rooms of 677 Acacia Drive. Yet their parents--unyielding, clinging to their upper-middle-class life--have refused to budge. When communication abruptly stops between their sisters and parents, Ezri must return to Dallas with their daughter, Elijah, in tow. After nearly two decades, Ezri revisits 677, where they find both parents dead. Though the local police report that the Maxwells planned a murder-suicide, the siblings are far from convinced. They can't agree, however, on whether their parents were killed by supernatural forces or not. In evocative prose, Solomon harnesses and recasts classic horror tropes to tell an original story of race and class, family, trauma, and grief. Each character--including the parents--is finely rendered, with the dynamic among the siblings illustrating the ways loyalties shift and change, in constant renegotiation, and dramatizing the ruptures activated by traumatic events. The novel's construction is elliptical, with past and present alternating from chapter to chapter. Most are narrated by Ezri, with a few shifts in perspective. While this may throw some readers off, the twists and turns are carefully drawn, with the tension mounting toward a shocking end. Readers should be aware that the novel features themes of grooming and child sex abuse, and Solomon is thoughtful in their treatment of these heavy issues. With this exhilarating and unforgettable work, Solomon proves to be a formidable writer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
