Book Review: Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff

Having seen the excellent movie "Get Out,", when I read that Jordan Peele and Underground's Misha Green were to turn this novel--which was not on my radar--into a TV series, I went to the library to pick it up so I could know what I was in for. I'm glad I did. Billed as a "Jim Crow horror story," it is that and much more: science fiction, fantasy, ghost story, historical fiction are all genres that Ruff utilizes. He dramatizes the quotidian horrors and humiliations of black Americans negotiating life not only in the Jim Crow South, but the daily offenses against them in Northern locations like Chicago and Massachusetts, too. But, more than only create a genre story that drags contemporary readers back in time to feel what 1954 was like for black citizens in negative ways, he utilizes the various types of non-realist fiction to empower his main cast of characters to fight back and try on different ways of being--some more positive than others.

Set in 1954, the novel is laid out in a series of chapters that read more like connected short stories. We follow a cast of interesting and realistic African-Americans, several of whom are fans of the sci-fi works of writers like the racist H.P. Lovecraft. 12-year old Horace is a gifted artist, who draws comic books with black heroes that he doesn't see in the titles that show up in the local comic store he frequents. His mother, Hippolyta, had always aspired to be an astronomer, but was told that wasn't a field for someone of her race. His father, George, publishes "The Safe Negro Travel Guide," modeled on the real-world "The Negro Travelers' Green Book," that guides black travelers to hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that will serve them, as well as lets them know extra-dangerous areas to avoid. His older cousin, Atticus, is recently returned from fighting in Korea, a task his father Montrose--a survivor of the 1921 Tulsa riot and attacks of white Tulsans against black--opposed. Both George and Atticus are fans of Lovecraft and other sci-fi writers, even if the writers' take on race sometimes "stab [them] in the heart" (13). Atticus' childhood friends from the neighborhood, Letitia and Ruby round out the cast of black characters, who become involved--unwillingly and unwittingly at first--with white men who belong to an old and peculiar secret group organized around principles of natural philosophy. The most dedicated and skilled ones are powerful magicians. They have a special "need" for Atticus, and all of his family members and friends are sucked into the magicians' scheme as well.

The plot is intricate and many-faceted; I won't spoil it, but found it intriguing, suspenseful, and very much enjoyed following the protagonists in their defense of themselves (at first), but more and more their own plotting and maneuvers to come out ahead of their adversaries. In the process, there is strange magic, visits to other planets, co-habiting with ghosts, and time spent in parallel dimensions. Through it all, we see the power of righteous anger, the ways that the past can never really be the past when the same hateful events keep happening, the sad power--and danger--of putting oneself in another's skin, and the wonders of the imagination.

I can see why Peele, Green, and their colleagues want to create this story on screen. I can't wait to watch it when they do.