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Title details for Model Home by Rivers Solomon - Available

Model Home

A Novel

by Rivers Solomon
Gabby Beans
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

Welcome to Rivers Solomon's dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel.
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.
As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family's past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a "natural" death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?
Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 1, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781250353962
      • File size: 242343 KB
      • Duration: 08:24:52

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 12, 2024
      “My life is a dark woods with a slasher in the midst,” says Ezri Washington Maxwell, the protagonist of this eerie horror novel from Solomon (Sorrowland). Ezri, a highly educated, Black, autistic, intersex single parent, grew up in a predominantly white Texas suburb. Though they have doggedly tried to escape their background, they and their two sisters are forced by the deaths of their parents to reconvene in the family home in a classic haunted house setup. The substance of the horror stems from Ezri grappling with the recall of innumerable tortured moments spent within its walls. The first half of the book is stellar in its evocation of Ezri’s emotional suffocation, past and present. Midway through, however, Ezri latches on to the image of themselves as the tormented child in the Ursula K. LeGuin story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” a literary reference that feels somewhat clunky. Meanwhile the intricate, shadowed layers of memory they have laboriously delineated shrivel in the spotlighting of a barely sketched villain. The consequences of evil are as multifaceted and sharp as shattered crystal, while evildoers are sledgehammers without nuance. This may be true enough in life, but it’s a bit of a letdown in fiction. Still, the dazzling atmospherics and sharp-toothed point about race in America will draw readers in. Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Co.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Gabby Beans performs this suspenseful novel about a Black nonbinary protagonist who is haunted by the events that occurred at their childhood home. After years of living in the UK, Ezri finds themself on a plane back to the U.S. to visit their parents in their suburban home outside Dallas, Texas. There, Ezri finds their parents dead and begins trying to reconstruct their last moments. Beans's narration captures the dialogue of Ezri and their two sisters, highlighting the vibrant dynamic between them. Beans's approach creates emotional depth for the siblings as they work through the trauma of their pasts and confront the horrific truths they've fought so hard to forget. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2025

      Solomon (Sorrowland) offers a haunted-house story in which the true horrors are those inflicted by society and human monsters. Ezri Maxwell grew up with their sisters in an affluent home, the only Black family in a predominantly white neighborhood. The children believed their house is haunted by a malevolent entity Ezri called Nightmare Mother. Upon reaching adulthood, they scatter and only return to their childhood home when Ezri finds their parents dead of apparent suicides, leaving the siblings, particularly Ezri, to confront the nightmare living in their house. The supernatural serves merely as a backdrop as Solomon delivers a stark character study of siblings afflicted with trauma. With an especially nuanced portrait of Ezri, narrator Gabby Beans depicts a family whose members are individually broken. Through Beans's emotional performance, Ezri is shown to be a pressure cooker, struggling to contain and express the anger and horror inflicted by their life in the house, as well as their experience being Black, neurodivergent, and nonbinary. VERDICT A troubling story limning the effects of childhood trauma, grooming, and abuse, this is recommended for fans of Tananarive Due, who also writes strong Black characters encountering supernatural and societal horrors.--James Gardner

      Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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