Rivers Solomon’s new novel Model Home reads like a horror novel. And in many ways it is. But the horrors that it reveals hit closer to home than readers are likely to expect. As with her previous novels, Solomon uses some genre conventions to explore the experience of Black communities in America. And she does not hold back.
The central character of Model Home is Ezri. Ezri ran away from the family home in Texas, moved to England and converted to Judaism. But the murder-suicide of her parents in that family home brings her and her daughter Elijah back to both Texas and Ezri’s sisters Eve and Emmanuel. In dealing with the death of their parents, the three sisters are forced to confront the terrors of their childhood – where they were the only Black family in an otherwise all-white housing estate. But worse than that, to deal with their belief that the house was (and still is) haunted and that Ezri was in some way possessed. The truth, when they finally uncover it is much, much worse.
On their website, Solomon describes themselves as fae – “half woman, half boy, part beast” and the same could be said about her protagonist Ezri. Gender fluid, conflicted, sometimes feral, fiercely loyal to her family but at the same time combative towards them, Ezri is a somewhat unreliable guide to this world. Ezri believes intensely in the supernatural narrative that has built up around her life but also constantly needs to question its validity. But Ezri also recognises the damage that was done to her as a child and tries (not always successfully) not to pass that trauma on to their daughter.
Much like the cinematic work of Jordan Peele, Solomon effectively uses well understood tropes in Model Home to explore the Black experience in America. Solomon peels back the veneer to the hypocrisy and racism inherent in the community and the petty justifications that people make for their discriminatory behaviour. On the surface, both of these auteurs work in horror, but only in so far as it reveals the true horrors of modern society.
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
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