“Sometimes the worst thing happened—usually, in fact. Gloria couldn’t remember a single time the best outcome had won out.”
If you go into the book The Reformatory with that understanding, you’ll be fine.
Just kidding.
But not really.
It was a real journey with The Reformatory, the most recent horror novel by Tananarive Due. First off, it took me almost two months to get through it because it’s a chonkster, as in pages, and heavy, as in content and tone. The buildup of tension was relentless, almost suffocating. I could feel the weight of dread like an iron shroud. There was one section that felt like it would never end because it was so tense and terrible.
I really appreciated that Due gives all of the characters depth, even the evil white ones. No caricatures. And moments of decency in the midst of dilemma and fear. Another thing I loved about this book was how it showed that heroic acts are often performed by people who don’t embody the obvious qualities of the superhero. People who are old, disabled, ignored, overlooked, and have challenges functioning day-to-day.
The real-life situation in The Reformatory itself is enough to count as horror, in my opinion. The supernatural horror element came in the form of ghosts a.k.a. haints, and I really liked how they were woven into the narrative, and the surprise of how they were going to affect the storyline and the characters. They weren’t terrifying in the way that you’d think, but they were terrifying because they had completely opposing motivations and goals to the main character, who was dealing with his own severe peril.
“The past belongs in the past. I rebuke evil spirits who dwell in history!” Does this sound familiar? This line is from the villain of the story, and is the same sentiment of some people in political power who want to erase our history, particularly the history of Black Americans. And now that I’m thinking about it, of course the reason why people don’t want to have to remember the past is because they don’t want to have to be accountable to anything.
Toward the end of the book, I’m not gonna lie, I felt so incredibly sad, not only for the characters in the story, but for our real-life ancestors.
I’m never going to forget the experience of reading The Reformatory, and I think Tananarive Due accomplished an amazing feat and wrote a masterpiece. It’ll be a while, though, before I read a book this nerve-racking again.
I nearly couldn’t take it.
Footnote:
This line cracked me up:
“Is it true you hired a communist lawyer. . .?”
“The NAACP isn’t communist,” Gloria said.
I mean, right now, in these here times, gotta love that line.
Shannon Yvonne Moreau 