Sorrowland, Rivers Solomon
Sorrowland, Rivers Solomon
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Sorrowland
A Novel

Author: Rivers Solomon

Narrator: Karen Chilton

Unabridged: 12 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/04/2021


Synopsis

"Narrator Karen Chilton gives a riveting performance in this genre-defying masterpiece...The echoes of Chilton's haunting and beautiful narration will reverberate long after this powerful audiobook is over." -- AudioFile Magazine

A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction

Vern—seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised—flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future—outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.

A Macmillan Audio production from MCD

About Rivers Solomon

Rivers Solomon writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honor List and winning a Firecracker Award, Solomon's debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, was a finalist for Lambda, Hurston/Wright, Otherwise (formerly Tiptree), and Locus Awards. Solomon's second book, The Deep, based on the Hugo-nominated song by the Daveed Diggs–fronted hip-hop group clipping, was the winner of the 2020 Lambda Award and was short-listed for the Nebula, Locus, Hugo, Ignyte, Brooklyn Library Literary, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. Their work appears in Black Warrior Review, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Guernica, Best American Short Stories, Tor.com, Best American Horror and Dark Fantasy, and elsewhere. A refugee of the transatlantic slave trade, Solomon was born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an archipelago off the western coast of the Eurasian continent.

About Karen Chilton

Karen Chilton is a multi-talented author, actor, and audiobook narrator, as well as a freelance writer, script writer, and librettist. She wrote the biography Hazel Scott about the trailblazing jazz pianist and coauthored I Wish You Love with legendary jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne. Her acting credits include It's Kind of a Funny Story and Half Nelson. She won a New Professional Theatre Writers award for her play Convergence and an Audiofile Golden Earphones Award for her narration of Karolyn Smardz Frost's I've Got a Home in Glory Land. She has also narrated Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Jennifer Berry Hawes' Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Roxane on January 12, 2021

Sorrowland, from Rivers Solomon, is a fantastical, fierce reckoning. It is the story of Vern, a young girl fleeing the only life she has ever known, her abusive husband, the cult he leads, to create a life for herself and her babies. But the tentacles of Cainland, the home she left, are always follo......more

Goodreads review by Ceecee on March 04, 2021

This is the story of Vern, a fifteen year old albino black woman who flees the ‘Cainland’ compound where she has grown up. She goes into the woods where she gives birth to twins who she names Howling and Feral. Vern experiences ‘hauntings’ which seem like hallucinations but also feel real. After sev......more

Goodreads review by Charlie on January 15, 2021

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon contains so much wisdom and insight, wrapped in an abundance of passion and fury and tenderness. This is the first book I've read in ages that I'm certain I will come back to again and again, because there are rich gorgeous passages that I already know will mean more to......more

Goodreads review by Melissa (Semi-hiatus for Work) on February 24, 2022

This is an extremely complex gothic social horror novel. I had been putting off reading it for quite a while, but I saw the audiobook on my library's app and decided to give it a try that way. It's a very engrossing audiobook. The story of Vern, a fifteen year old pregnant girl living in a cult calle......more


Awards

  • L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist
  • Amazon.com Best Books of the Year
  • Time Magazine Best Books of the Year
  • Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
  • NYPL Best Books of the Year
  • NPR Best Book of the Year
  • Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year