I read Lovecraft Country last fall, and it was one of my favorite books of 2018. It came to my attention when I was researching and reading comparable titles for my novel. (Further adventures in the Sean Joye series: Water of Life and The Resurrectionist.) Lovecraft Country takes all those weird tropes I discussed in the Weird Fiction Genre post and well as H.P. Lovecraft’s ubiquitous racism and stands them on their ear.
Lovecraft Country As a Physical Object
It was pretty much love at first sight for me when I picked up the hardback copy of Lovecraft Country that I’d requested from the library. Lovecraft’s stories were published back in the day (1920s and 1930s) by cheap, pulp-fiction rags, and Matt Ruff’s novel is designed to emulate those magazine covers. In addition to garish art, multiple exclamation points, and aggressive font, the book cover is physically distressed: edges scuffed and ragged, images faded, and worn spots. When I eventually bought a copy from a used book site, I think the seller totally fell for it, and rated this like-new copy as merely “acceptable.” Double bargain! I love meta book design, don’t you?
Novel or Short Story Collection?
Lovecraft Country is divided into seven chapters (or stories in the pretend pulp-fiction magazine we’re reading), each centering on a member of the Turner-Berry family or their friends. Each part is a short story, novelette, or novella in itself, but all wrap around together into the narrative that is the novel. The first chapter, “Lovecraft Country,” is classic eldritch-cult weird fiction, and other chapters delve into horror and even science fiction.
Who Are The Real Monsters?
Lovecraft Country’s cover promises “American’s Demons Exposed!” An underlying theme of the novel is the treatment of people of color in the United States by the white majority. In the book that treatment is generally suspicious, rude, and hostile and often criminal and deadly.
Most chapters start with a small quote that illuminates the social and political situation at the time of the story, such as from The Green Book (called The Safe Negro Travel Guide in the novel and published by one of the novel’s characters).
Lovecraft Country Review
The novel takes place in 1954, and the main story arc involves a young veteran, Atticus Turner. The reader is up close for the small and large daily assaults on his family members’ dignity and sometimes safety, but a higher-level threat soon appears. Atticus’s father is missing, and Atticus, his uncle, and their friend, Letitia, trace him to a strange New England town called Ardham and to the even stranger estate of an aristocratic family named Braithwhite. The Braithwhite’s have lots of secrets and nefarious magical plans for the Turners, especially Atticus.
Subplots center on other family members, from interstellar travel through mysterious portals to cursed objects. All wind into the main story, which resolves in the final chapter.
I found this book skillfully written, interesting, and engaging. It creates a compelling, realistic 1950s milieu that feels authentic. The characters were vivid. The antagonists are particularly villainous scenery-chewers and don’t have a lot of depth, but that does fit with the pulp-fiction trope overlay for the whole piece. I found Caleb Braithwhite a particularly fascinating bastard and can’t wait to see who HBO casts for the role. (I pictured a young Leonardo DiCaprio while reading the novel.)
The book made choices that aren’t easy to pull off. For example, changing the point-of-view (main) character in each chapter is risky. Readers tend to invest in the “hero” and don’t always like getting to know a new person. Thus, the story must re-engage the reader with every change. The unrelenting, really pointless, racism the protagonists encounter wears the reader down, and that is the point, I think. The social environment in which they live makes the simplest task of life difficult.
Recommendations
I recommend Lovecraft Country for readers interested in weird and horror fiction, modern-era historical fiction, and social commentary on American society. For white citizens, the events going on in the background of all the weird cult shenanigans may be quite enlightening and rightfully disturbing. More disturbing than extra-planar monsters. Lovecraft Country is available on Amazon.com and at your favorite bookseller. An HBO series based on the novel is in the works.
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