Each focuses on a different character in these two families, some of whom only having small parts before they’re given their time to grow. The novel is divided into smaller, titled sections that feel like short stories in their own right, though they’re largely dependent on those that came before them to work. I would not call it an anthology story, though at times it certainly felt like it. Atticus Turner is who sees us into the world of this story, but it expands from there, with a narrative through-line running from beginning to end. The outline given in the summary above, which is about half of what was on the back cover, is only really the tip of the iceberg. In this case, it is the world of Jim Crow America from the perspective on an ensemble cast of characters from two Black American families.

I enjoy otherworldly forces and eldritch beings, but what especially drew me in was how this book appeared to be marrying these ideas with a real-world source of fear and suffering (as most good horror does). Lovecraft Country is a 2016 horror novel by Matt Ruff, which I have been looking forward to reading for quite some time. Braithwhite-heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother-they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George-publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide -and his childhood friend Letitia.

Lovecraft country novel review