Model Home (Solomon)

Model Home
Rivers Solomon (2024)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was a Pandemic Book Club selection. I listened to it, and then read it. It was mostly hated and ripped about by my book club. It rivaled Anger is a Gift as a benchmark to mock other books by.

It didn't help that I listened to this book right after listening to Parable of the Sower. I make no comparisons because that's too high a bar, but, damn.

There are spoilers below because there is no way to discuss this book without them.

The title "Model Home" refers to the house that the family bought. Model homes are a showcase and usually have hidden flaws. Buying this home could almost be like a bait and switch, except every buyer should know that there's less than meets the eye.

This term could also apply to the family that occupies the home as well. (More below.)

But the real flaw belongs to the book itself where one might expect a malignant spirit haunting this house, when in fact the real problem is much more mundane but just as malignant. There is nothing supernatural about the horrors of this house. Every problem has a manmade cause.

Basically, this is the most messed up version of Scooby Doo that you could possibly imagine. And they would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Instead of a story about a haunted house, we get the twisted, messed up lives or a bunch of twisted, messed up people. The main character isn't sympathetic, and neither is anyone else. Like Anger is a Gift, all the checkboxes are checked, including the sudden inclusion of diabetes halfway through the book.

This story takes place in the present (and over the past 30 years) but the attitudes seem quite dated to decades before that. Except of course, that it couldn't be decades earlier because (aside from obvious indicators like tech) no one has a problem with a young boy who suddenly becomes nonbinary and uses "them" pronouns *in the late 90s*. It's hard to take the story seriously when people are supposed to have problems with a black family in a white community but they take non-binary and transgenderism in stride. At the very least, you'd expect more misgendering and misuse of pronouns three decades ago.

Basically, this could've been better if it picked and chose which issues it would stress. And possibly if there actually had been a Lady Without a Face haunting the place.

No, I didn't enjoy this book. I would rate this book 1 star, which I normally reserve for poorly, written self-published work, not because this is poorly written but because it's just that bad.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.