Lovecraft Country

by Matt Ruff

The New York Times bestselling book behind the HBO Series from J.J. Abrams, Misha Green and Jordan Peele (Director of Get Out).

A blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism – the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.

Journey into the depths of Lovecraft Country . . .

Chicago, 1954. In the starkly segregated Jim Crow America, Atticus Turner, a twenty-two year-old Army veteran, embarks on a road trip to New England to find his missing father, Montrose. He is accompanied by his Uncle George – publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide – and his childhood friend, Letitia.

As they travel, they encounter both the terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours. Their destination is the manor of Mr. Braithwhite: heir of the estate that once enslaved Atticus's ancestor.

In this ominous realm, Atticus discovers his father in chains, imprisoned, a victim of a secretive cult named The Order of the Ancient Dawn. They have gathered to orchestrate a shocking ritual, with Atticus at its centre. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his – and the whole Turner clan’s – destruction . . .

'At every turn, Ruff has great fun pitting mid-twentieth-century horror and sci-fi clichés against the banal and ever present bigotry of the era' – New York Times Book Review

• ISBN10: 1509883355
• ISBN13: 9781509883356
• Publish Date: 30 May 2019 (first published 16 February 2016)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Picador
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[pamela]

I really struggled with Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country. Matt Ruff is an excellent writer, and when he was good in this book, he really excelled. But those moments of excellence didn't make up for what was a disjointed ride through poor world-building and bland characterisation.

"But stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn't make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though."

Ruff's concept is a stellar one. He uses Lovecraftian symbolism to illustrate the racism of historical Jim Crow era America, highlighting that the real horror lies, not in the supernatural, but in the very real behaviours of real people. There was one scene in the first chapter that quite literally had me grinding my teeth with anxiety. But the message gets lost inside a mess of poor pacing, and two-dimensional characters.

Lovecraft Country, rather than being a single, cohesive narrative, consists largely of a series of short stories told from different character's points of view. In theory, this could have worked, but because they still happened chronologically, reading them made the plot feel disjointed and floundering. The disconnect between the characters and each of their stories made the ultimate conclusion feel more like a convenient tying up of loose ends, rather than a natural development, and I found it really hard to immerse myself in the story.

The other element that lost me was the complete lack of worldbuilding. Each story starts with a character living real experiences and then ends in some sort of Lovecraftian craziness. Because of the lack of connection between each short story, however, and the fact that there was no real worldbuilding, it felt very odd how accepting each of the characters seemed to be of what was happening around them, and to them. There was never any fear or confusion. The horror simply was. If we accept the Lovecraftian elements as an allegory for racism, then I guess that makes sense, but given that the characters also lived and experienced actual racism, their blind acceptance of the supernatural horrors just didn't feel true. The horror elements felt under-developed, rather than as a way to accentuate the allegory that Ruff was trying to get across. Add to this the lack of agency that the characters had throughout the novel, and it felt like just a series of things happening to some people with names, rather than a cohesive, well-developed story.

There is so much potential in Lovecraft Country, but ultimately I thought the execution was poor. If Ruff released a second edition of this book told with a single, narrative structure, and fleshing out the Lovecraftian mythos he created in his novel, I would probably give it another go. But in its current form, Lovecraft Country simply failed to connect with me.