Lovecraft Country
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Community Reviews
(Three and a half stars from me.) A bit ambivalent about this book. It's a mash-up of social commentary on race relations in mid-twentieth century America and Lovecraftian horror. Or that's what it wants to be.
At the former it is successful; it is steeped in the ugliness that is prejudice. And it does it both plainly and artfully, subtly and brashly. Ruff shines a light on the dark times that was Jim Crow-era America, and what it shows is as ugly as any fantastical creation of fiction. At times hard to read, showing us the worst of what we as a country, as a people, can be, it is the story of (a small sliver of) the extreme racism faced by African Americans.
At the latter, not so much. Cults and other-worldly places and bizarre creatures and malevolent sorcerers. It has those. But that's not the horror of Lovecraft. The world of Lovecraft is the creeping, unknowable dread of a "something else". It is the madness that is so far beyond mortal understanding that not only can we not comprehend it but just the attempt creates more insanity. It is dread on a cosmic level. I understand what Ruff was tying to do, but it just did not click for me in as satisfying a way as I was hoping. The reality is that prejudice in 1950s America, or anytime America, or anytime anywhere, is not a unknowable horror. It is a known horror that we must understand and confront.
Yes, Lovecraft was a racist. But that fact does not make this work. (Perhaps better than using, say, The Mists of Avalon to illustrate child molestation, but drawing that line is tenuous, especially for those familiar with the Lovecraft stories.) The metaphor flounders, perhaps because there is just too little actual Lovecraftian dread present but also because the types of horror do not align in a substantive way, at least for me. And so the melding of these two themes, Lovecraft and the evil that is prejudice, does not work as I assume Ruff was intending.
That being said, it is still a very good read. It works as a historical horror novel, just not solidly as a Lovecraft horror novel. I'm glad I read it. I will recommend it to others. But I wish I had not gone into it expecting so much Lovecraft. Had that expectation not been in my mind my appreciation and enjoyment would have been much greater.
At the former it is successful; it is steeped in the ugliness that is prejudice. And it does it both plainly and artfully, subtly and brashly. Ruff shines a light on the dark times that was Jim Crow-era America, and what it shows is as ugly as any fantastical creation of fiction. At times hard to read, showing us the worst of what we as a country, as a people, can be, it is the story of (a small sliver of) the extreme racism faced by African Americans.
At the latter, not so much. Cults and other-worldly places and bizarre creatures and malevolent sorcerers. It has those. But that's not the horror of Lovecraft. The world of Lovecraft is the creeping, unknowable dread of a "something else". It is the madness that is so far beyond mortal understanding that not only can we not comprehend it but just the attempt creates more insanity. It is dread on a cosmic level. I understand what Ruff was tying to do, but it just did not click for me in as satisfying a way as I was hoping. The reality is that prejudice in 1950s America, or anytime America, or anytime anywhere, is not a unknowable horror. It is a known horror that we must understand and confront.
Yes, Lovecraft was a racist. But that fact does not make this work. (Perhaps better than using, say, The Mists of Avalon to illustrate child molestation, but drawing that line is tenuous, especially for those familiar with the Lovecraft stories.) The metaphor flounders, perhaps because there is just too little actual Lovecraftian dread present but also because the types of horror do not align in a substantive way, at least for me. And so the melding of these two themes, Lovecraft and the evil that is prejudice, does not work as I assume Ruff was intending.
That being said, it is still a very good read. It works as a historical horror novel, just not solidly as a Lovecraft horror novel. I'm glad I read it. I will recommend it to others. But I wish I had not gone into it expecting so much Lovecraft. Had that expectation not been in my mind my appreciation and enjoyment would have been much greater.
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