Lovecraft Country

Today's post is on Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. It is 384 pages long and is published b HarperCollins. The cover is red with a white house on top of a hill with strange clansmen at the bottom. The intended reader is someone who likes horror, Lovecraftian themes, and interesting characters. There is some mild foul language, implied sexuality, and violence in this novel. The story is told from third person close of different characters over the course of the story. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.
At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.
A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of one black family, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.

Review- I had a good time with this book. The writing was very good, the characters were interesting, and the Weird was excellent. There was not enough of the Weird for me, personally. The story is told in section moving from character and one strange horror to the next. My favorite section was Hippolyta disturbs the Universe which the character has some great Weird and Strange encounters. But most of the book is about the too real horror of being black in the era of Jim Crow laws. The times of real terror for me, while reading this book, where when the characters interacted with white people with power. They were shot at, bullied, beat up, and worse. But through it all there was the creeping Weird at the corners of the book. I loved that and I wanted more. I hope that Ruff writes more Weird, he does it good.

I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I was given this book by HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review.