Non-Binary Writers | The Writes of Womxn

The world unfolds according to a logic most strange when you’re a child, and it wouldn’t do any good to try to parse it. If a house has claws, a house has claws.

Ezri has made a life for themselves as far from their upbringing as possible in a mold-infested, old house in England with their daughter, Elijah. Their sisters, Eve and Emmanuelle, summon them back to 677 Acacia Drive, Oak Creek Estates, Dallas, Texas; a wealthy, gated community where the siblings and their parents, Eudora and Edward, were the only Black family. Ezri arrives at the house, which has tortured their family for years, to discover the bodies of their parents, dead in a seeming murder-suicide. The siblings do not believe this and instead are convinced that it is the house that has killed them.

The novel simultaneously details the aftermath of the deaths, the grief the siblings feel while they attempt to discover what really happened, and their time in the house when they were younger. The latter comprises two strands: Ezri’s relationship with their mother and the horror that the house produces.

Eudora is a former academic and formidable parent who expects excellence from her children. She also pits them against each other – Both of us look at Mama to see which of the two of us will be praised and which of the two of us will be discarded…; is unpredictable – I could never know how Mama was going to react to anything, though. I hated tossing the coin. I preferred to keep secrets. If I didn’t show her who I was, she couldn’t mock me’, but also does not allow others to question or critique Ezri’s genderqueerness – She thrived and felt loved, purposeful, when she was the centre of attention, and by advocating for me, she got that. This leads to Ezri saying how they could long for Mama’s approval. Bask in it. Get drunk on it. Want to fuck it. Her sycophant to the end. And what about Edward? Well, their response to him provides one of the most devastating lines in the book: Goodness, we can’t be disappointed by men we never once believed in.

As for the house, Ezri was haunted by a woman without a face who pulled her into the attic, a place they could not have got into on their own; Eve is covered in scars from the acid that came out of the taps, and a young boy, Hogan, disappeared in there and was never heard of again.

Solomon combines the horror that the house provides with childhood trauma and the trauma of being the only Black family in a wealthy, white neighbourhood. They question what is inherited through the generations, both familial and racial, and whether it is possible to break these cycles. Model Home is both an intense, thoughtful exploration of Black excellence, siblinghood and existing in a queer body, and a page-turning, genuinely scary, haunted house novel. One of my books of the year.

Thanks to Merky Books for the review copy.

“You can’t see the big picture, only the petty, small, meaningless pleasures and pains of your tiny lives. Mating and drinking and carrying on no better than the draft horses who stubbornly refuse to work when they’ve got a sore ankle.” Lieutenant’s lips snarled. “We have a purpose. Matilda has a purpose. We are on God’s path, and we mustn’t stray. It has been centuries, and it will be centuries more. All we can do is live well. Live good, according to the Heavens’ will.”

Aster lives in the lowdecks of the HSS Matilda. For years the Lieutenant has had a vendetta against her, making her life difficult and, sometimes, the lives of people around her. Aster is smart, persistent and finds social cues difficult to read. She’s never explicitly described as autistic but there are several moments where the ways in which she deals with sensory overload are detailed. Like all of the people on lowdeck, Aster has a job. Which, for her, is working in the fields. However, she is also apprenticed to the Surgeon from whom she learns medical procedures to support those in the lowdecks.

Aster’s mother killed herself when Aster was young. Her coded journals remain, detailing her work in the hub of the ship. When Aster’s friend Giselle manages to decode them, Aster believes they may reveal something new about her mother’s death and sets out to find out more.

An Unkindness of Ghosts is a fresh, gripping tale with a protagonist rarely seen in literature. Solomons incorporates characters who are gay, bisexual, asexual, use they/them pronouns, are working class, upper class, are Black female engineers and medics. If I was writing a strapline for it, it would be A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet meets Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer written by a Black non-binary person. Solomons has a new novel publishing in 2021 and I’ll be front of the queue.

An Unkindness of Ghosts is published by Akashic Books. The copy I read was my own purchase.