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MODEL HOME

Rivers Solomon

MODEL HOME is a queer gothic masterpiece - a reinvention of the haunted house story that will find its place next to the work of Sarah Waters or Shirley Jackson.
Welcome to Rivers Solomon's dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel. Upon the mysterious death of their parents in their childhood home, the three Maxwell siblings must confront not only their racist white neighbors, but the traumas of their past and the truth about the creepy gated community in which they were raised. 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 thingsthe strange and the unexplainablebegan 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. 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 Diggsfronted 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.
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Published 2025-02-20 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux/MCD

Comments

In Rivers Solomon's hands, a McMansion is just as scary as a creaky old Victorian Read more...

[O]ne of the more buzzed-about books of the season

Fueled by unreliable narrator Ezri's grief, Solomon's lyrical slow burn is a disquieting and disorienting rumination on heavy themes including racism, mental illness, gender dysphoria, and sexual abuse. The ambiguity of Ezri's reflections will keep readers turning the pages to find out what really happened to the Maxwell siblings, whose traumatic childhoods continue to haunt them long after they leave home. Solomon's genre-defying achievement subverts and reclaims the tropes of the gothic haunted house to create something wholly original and unforgettable.

The Stonewall Book Award Winner of 2022 The Otherwise Award Winner of 2021 Finalist for the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction, Los Angeles Times

MCD Publisher Sean McDonald will give an elevator pitch for Model Home to Tertulia readers in their Fall First Dibs ARC Salon, happening virtually Tuesday, 9/17 at 7:30pm EDT You can sign up to watch here with the code FSGDIBS Read more...

Model Home: French: Les Forges de Vulcain

Rivers Solomon's Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon. Read more...

Intense, original, and wonderfully unpredictable, those adjectives describe Rivers Solomon as much as this novel. Model Home is a story of a haunted house and haunted people; profound family secrets lie at the heart of this book as well as, surprisingly, blessedly, meaningful touches of love and hope. Rivers Solomon is an astonishingly talented writer.

A profoundly haunting work of true horror from one of the greatest writers working today.

Sorrowland: British/Merky Books, French/Aux Forges de Vulcain, Italian/Mondadori

[A] startling reimagination of the haunted-house genre . . . In evocative prose, Solomon harnesses and recasts classic horror tropes to tell an original story of race and class, family, trauma, and grief. Each character . . . is finely rendered, with the dynamic among the siblings illustrating the ways loyalties shift and change, in constant renegotiation, and dramatizing the ruptures activated by traumatic events. The novel's construction is elliptical, with past and present alternating from chapter to chapter [and Solomon's] twists and turns are carefully drawn, with the tension mounting toward a shocking end . . . With this exhilarating and unforgettable work, Solomon proves to be a formidable writer.