Lovecraft Country

So overall I really liked this book. It recast the standard Lovecraft mythos in Jim Crow America, with the protagonists various members of the same African-American family who get pulled into the various machinations of groups of cultists. The fact that this was already a group of people that were pretty much at the mercy of whatever white America chose for them makes them ideal fodder for a group that can capitalize on that to use them as pawns in their own games.

Probably my biggest gripe in these was that there was very little of Elder God-like beings in these books. There was one instance where some very non-human creature made an appearance, plus a couple of instances of ghosts/spirits, but by and large this was focused on the people and there wasn't a lot to distinguish the sorcerors as being particularly Lovecraftian. In some ways this was almost more of a spin on a detective noir trope, but with spells and sorcery instead.

White people in his experience were far more transparent. The most hateful rarely bothered to conceal their hostility, and when for some reason they did try to hide their feelings, they generally exhibited all the guile of five-year-olds, who cannot imagine that the world sees them other than as they wish to be seen.

I will say one thing: this was certainly an ambitious book that tried to do a lot of different things at once. Unfortunately I find myself walking away from this one feeling like it became a victim of those very ambitions. I don't say this often, but I truly think this book would have benefited from being longer than it was.

Multiple reviews of this book - even the ones printed on the very first page before you get to the content itself - described this one as "fast-paced" or using a similar buzzword, so I at least had that expectation going into it. The way the book is structured there aren't formal chapters in the traditional sense, but more like big chunks of narrative that take turns following different characters as the story progressed. Nothing I haven't seen before, but what I took issue with was how much time was devoted to each of these mini-arcs. Each one had an interesting enough premise to hold up as a short story or even novella in its own right, but just as I felt like I was getting into the groove of things that section of the story would end and we'd be abruptly shuffled along to a new character and conflict. More than once I wanted to go back to what was happening a few paragraphs earlier and explore that setting more, but the plot demanded we continue in a new direction instead.

This book also frequently comes up in Horror recommendation lists, which I suppose is the genre I would put it under if I had to choose one, though I'd be second-guessing myself if I did. There was a heavy theme of occultism and secret societies throughout most of the vignettes and more than one deus ex machina courtesy of some paranormal something-or-other lurking in the shadows, but the only times I felt afraid for the all-black cast of protagonists was when a white man entered the scene, which unfortunately is more mundane than outright spooky.

For context, the story takes place in the Jim Crow South as well as Chicago in the 1950's, just after the Korean War. Obviously you don't have to be someone who lived through that era to know that race relations weren't the greatest, but I didn't feel like this book handled that fact very well. When literally every encounter with a white man quickly escalates into a near-death experience for one of the protagonists over the slightest fabricated transgressions, it reads less like an condemnation of the past and more like a parody of it. Realism takes a back seat to dramatic story-telling and I feel like an honest depiction of the era suffers for it. What could have been a subtle narrative device to introduce ambiguity to a white character's true intentions towards a protagonist instead becomes an immediate red flag for the sake of a cheap thrill.

That said, the main cast of characters were certainly likeable and distinct enough from each other that I never had trouble remembering who was who, but at times it did feel like I was being forced to juggle more threads than were necessary for less time than I wanted to.

There are many things that took me by surprise with this book, first and foremost: the style of story-telling.
I had expected a classical novel with a more or less (after all, this is meant to be "Lovecraftian") straight line towards a catastrophe. What I read was a collection of Lovecraft-inspired short stories which supplied little dots you could connect to form a central story. Some of these stories played out longer and in more (unimportant) detail than would have been necessary, I feel. Also, the writing was a lot more humourous than I anticipated - which wasn't a bad thing, only an unexpected element to the mix of Lovecraftian elements and racism criticism.

There are, as I have mentioned, Lovecraft elements such as doors between worlds across the universe, shapeless horrors haunting the shadows and covens of (elderly) white men trying to summon powers they don't seem to fully understand. But they don't supply the horrid and terrifying bits - that is wholly achieved by the disgusting racism the group of main chacarters encounters at every turn in a not so distant past in the US. Jim Crow definitely beats old Shoggoth in horror and ugliness here.
This book being set in the rural South of the US in the 1950s offers ways to show the effects of racism that wouldn't be plausible if the story was set in a contemporary US. While racism is still a problem there today (as in the whole world, actually and sadly), the discrimination against and segregation of people of colour in general and black people in particular is no longer written down as official state law. While people of colour still have to worry a lot more about being pulled over by cops than white people, at least the cop can no longer pull them over legally on the grounds of their skin colour and the time of day (or night, as happens to the characters in the book). Of course, the racism shown in the book reflects back on the reality of today, but the exact way racism influences Ruff's story development in his setting of the 1950s wouldn't be credible today. He'd have to tell certain aspects differently, in the same way an author telling a story the development of which is influenced by the presence of antisemitism in Germany would have to present incidents of antisemitism differently, depending on whether they set the story in contemporary Germany, 1930s Germany or medieval Germany. Antisemitism was there, sadly, in all these time periods - but the outward form it was legally allowed to take would differ greatly.

By presenting the incidents of racism as he does, Ruff enables the reader to draw the obvious conclusion that racism is absolutely wrong, and also stupid. What annoyed me at times was the schoolmasterly tone employed on top of that: "And this, kids, is why racism is bad." This just isn't necessary and might even hurt the valid point he's making because people in general are a lot less likely to consider a proposition or opinion as correct if the person presenting it gives them the feeling they think the audience is just too stupid to get it if it isn't spelt for them letter by letter. Neither Colson Whitehead in [b:The Underground Railroad|30555488|The Underground Railroad|Colson Whitehead|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1493178362l/30555488.SX50.jpg|48287641] nor Jodi Picoult in [b:Small Great Things|41021501|Small Great Things|Jodi Picoult|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533135682l/41021501.SX50.jpg|45950662] felt the need to spell it out for their readers, and still I can't imagine anyone with even half a braincell to read the first and think "awww, the good old times in the US South" or to read the second and think "yes, of course it's right to drag that nurse to court, I wish she'd been found guilty". Both authors show instead of telling, and trust their readers to be enough of a human being to still get it.

Still, the book is a good and surprisingly fun read despite the serious issue of racism underlying the whole plot.