Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! Model Home releases from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux on October 1st, 2024 in the US.

Rivers Solomon's Model Home is a master class in literary horror, exploring intergenerational trauma, race, queerness, and survival, framed within the confines of a suburban model home that serves as both literal and figurative battleground. This novel invites readers into the haunted life of Ezri Maxwell, a fat, genderqueer protagonist grappling with the horrors of their childhood home after the sudden deaths of both of their parents. Through Ezri’s journey, Solomon weaves a narrative that transcends the conventional boundaries of genre, offering a raw and daring portrayal of queer identity, intergenerational trauma, and the quest for healing.

From the start, Solomon subverts the traditional haunted house trope by transforming the Maxwell family’s suburban mansion into a symbol of inherited trauma and racial violence. The house itself, nestled in a predominantly white, gated community outside Dallas, becomes a suffocating metaphor for the structures of racism, segregation, and abuse that have shaped Ezri’s life. As Ezri returns to this childhood home with their sisters Eve and Emanuelle, they confront not only literal ghosts but the deeper, more insidious hauntings of secrets and unresolved pain. Solomon uses the setting to highlight the false promises of suburban utopia, exposing the violent undercurrents of a society built on racism and white supremacy.

At the heart of the novel lies Ezri’s emotional journey. They are both tender and hardened by the traumas they have endured, making their emotional turmoil palpable throughout the story. Solomon masterfully portrays Ezri’s struggle to navigate their gender identity, their body, and the burden of their family’s expectations. Ezri’s battle with dissociation and their need to unlearn the binary constraints of gender and self-worth are rendered with raw, visceral clarity. As Ezri grapples with the ghosts of their past, they are forced to confront the painful truths that lie at the heart of their own identity—a journey that is as harrowing as it is ultimately liberating.

The prose in Model Home mirrors the themes it tackles—fragmented, lyrical, and deeply unsettling. Solomon’s use of rich metaphor brings the house and its walls to life, anthropomorphizing them into symbols of the oppression that Ezri cannot seem to escape. The novel wrestles with the contradictions of survival—how to carry on in a world that both demands and denies one's existence. Ezri’s story is not one of sweeping salvation but of incremental triumphs, of surviving even when healing feels out of reach.

In Model Home, Solomon offers no easy answers, but instead, a meditation on survival and the small victories won in the face of trauma and oppression. This novel is as much about family bonds as it is about the secrets that erode them. It is a testament to resilience, queerness, and the fight to carve out a space for oneself in a world that seeks to diminish and erase. Solomon’s portrayal of trauma is brutal, but their vision of survival is equally powerful, forcing readers to confront the ghosts that haunt both the book’s characters and our world. Like Solomon’s previous works, Model Home is a book that demands not to be just read, but felt. Thank you, Rivers, for another searingly brilliant book. I can’t wait for the next one.

Content Note: Readers should be aware that while the sexual assault scenes are very mild, not very descriptive, and mostly implied, that childhood sexual assault ultimately serves as a key plot point.

Both Ezri and their daughter are groomed and assaulted by adult white women.

This is a poignant and critical antiracist critique, but it may be triggering for some readers.

📖 Recommended For: Fans of literary horror, readers who appreciate explorations of intergenerational trauma and queer identity, anti-racist advocates, lovers of Carmen Maria Machado and Octavia Butler.

🔑 Key Themes: Intergenerational Trauma, Queerness and Gender Identity, Racial Violence and Suburban Politics, Survival and Resilience, Family Secrets and Healing.