Atticus’s father is missing, and Atticus, his uncle, and their friend, Letitia, trace him to a strange New England town called Ardham and to the even stranger estate of an aristocratic family named Braithwhite. The reader is up close for the small and large daily assaults on his family members’ dignity and sometimes safety, but a higher-level threat soon appears. The novel takes place in 1954, and the main story arc involves a young veteran, Atticus Turner. Most chapters start with a small quote that illuminates the social and political situation at the time of the story, such as from The Green Book (called The Safe Negro Travel Guide in the novel and published by one of the novel’s characters). In the book that treatment is generally suspicious, rude, and hostile and often criminal and deadly. Lovecraft Country’s cover promises “American’s Demons Exposed!” An underlying theme of the novel is the treatment of people of color in the United States by the white majority. The first chapter, “Lovecraft Country,” is classic eldritch-cult weird fiction, and other chapters delve into horror and even science fiction. Each part is a short story, novelette, or novella in itself, but all wrap around together into the narrative that is the novel.

Lovecraft Country is divided into seven chapters (or stories in the pretend pulp-fiction magazine we’re reading), each centering on a member of the Turner-Berry family or their friends. When I eventually bought a copy from a used book site, I think the seller totally fell for it, and rated this like-new copy as merely “acceptable.” Double bargain! I love meta book design, don’t you? Novel or Short Story Collection? In addition to garish art, multiple exclamation points, and aggressive font, the book cover is physically distressed: edges scuffed and ragged, images faded, and worn spots. Lovecraft’s stories were published back in the day (1920s and 1930s) by cheap, pulp-fiction rags, and Matt Ruff’s novel is designed to emulate those magazine covers. It was pretty much love at first sight for me when I picked up the hardback copy of Lovecraft Country that I’d requested from the library. Lovecraft’s ubiquitous racism and stands them on their ear. (Further adventures in the Sean Joye series: Water of Life and The Resurrectionist.) Lovecraft Country takes all those weird tropes I discussed in the Weird Fiction Genre post and well as H.P. It came to my attention when I was researching and reading comparable titles for my novel. I read Lovecraft Country last fall, and it was one of my favorite books of 2018.

Matt ruff lovecraft