Book Review: The Reformatory

Image: The cover of the book is a Floridian swamp like scene with an ombre sunset going from shades of peach down to hues of purple. Three trees are silhouetted behind a small building resembling an old schoolhouse and silhouettes of cornstalks line the sides. Across the top in off-white letters framed by filigree lines is "the reformatory." Above that in small written black letters is "a novel." Across the bottom in small white letters is "american book award-winning author" and below that in larger peach letters is "Tananarive Due."
 

As a long time fan of Tananarive Due, I was excited to find out about The Reformatory- her first full length novel in over a decade. I first discovered her in the Dark Matter anthology and have enjoyed multiple novels and stories of hers. There have always been, ahem, horrifying themes in her horror. Racism, abuse, mental illness crises, murder, body horror, etc have been present in the past. But, this book took me some time to get through. It was one of those books that I could have read in a few days and instead took weeks. I think maybe if my life wasn't so unstable right now, I might have been able to take it in larger doses. I regularly thought of The Nickel Boys while reading this and I see that I was not the only one. Both texts taking place in the Jim Crow south and involve lots of violence towards children in an institutionalized setting, which is horrifying enough. Add haints haunting the place to the mix and it's on another level.

Like other novels of Due's, I felt myself slip into the world she created quite seamlessly. At times I couldn't tell if there was a little too much exposition or just enough, but overall it felt like I was there. I'm 40, so writers and those who share their history have created the world for me to experience having never been there. I believe she did this well. I also found the right characters likable and was rooting for them, which is part of what helps the reader get through such a depressing setting. There were also some gray-area characters- a well off white women who helps out but also screws up due to her own ignorance and privilege, Black men working at the reformatory acting as both oppressed and oppressor, etc, that were well crafted.

I can sometimes find a stark line between when something is trauma/torture porn (an obvious series example is Them) and trauma informed but creative horror (like Get Out.) I wasn't sure where the line was in this book. The true monsters of the book are Jim Crow and wider white supremacy, not the haints. But, there were times where I thought, "Did we need this long, detailed scene?" I found myself dreading a depiction of violence that was alluded to multiple times, but was thankfully not present, because the scenes that were there were brutal. I also think that the reformatory warden in this book is so evil that it can come off as cartoonish at times, allowing (especially white) readers to separate themselves and everyone they know from this inhuman devil, rather than seeing him as a part of the same species. Sometimes a villain that is most terrifying is one you could easily see yourself interacting with in rather everyday, normal ways. Maybe some white folks who were around in the South back then would feel that way about Haddock, but I personally could not. I am not sure if that's my own ignorance or just the fact that I don't hang out with cops and wardens in general.

While reading this book, I also watched Till which I was interested in in part due to the decision by Chinonye Chukwu not to depict physical violence against Black bodies on the screen. The movie was able to convey the horrors without it, but it is also not a horror movie or a fictional tale. It is the story of a well known piece of history with the fresher element of centering Emmett Till's mother. In the end, searching for that line I asked myself this: Can you ever tell the truth through fiction without depicting things that are horrifying? In historical fiction like The Reformatory, the backdrop is an actual history of many of these things actually happening to young Black boys. There were some truly sadistic people who regularly did horrific things while both enjoying them and receiving rewards. We have the lynching photos to prove it.

Something else I noticed was how Due used nonhuman animals throughout the story to show racism and oppression in interesting ways. The use of dogs as both imprisoned creatures forced to do harm and valued weapons (as extensions of their masters' egos more than actual care) trained in the most terrifying horrors was a repeated theme- both being treated better than Black people in some scenarios and not in others. There was also use of pigs and their terror in exploitation and slaughter as vehicles for understanding the feelings of prisoners, relating to their cries and identifying them as someone who is terrified rather than an object to be consumed. I notice these things often- how we as humans both relate to and distance ourselves from other animals in a variety of ways. I noticed them more than average in this book.

I originally was going to give this a 4 star rating, due to some of the aforementioned topics and also how many of the perspective changes mid chapter made things clunky. But, the ending sequence pulled that up to a 5 for me. One of my biggest gripes about so many horror novels (and movies and shows) is that I find some of the endings so boring or unsatisfying. The end sequence is the most exciting part of the book and the way things go is dark but also satisfying. It doesn't suddenly diverge from the time period to give you a an unrealistically happy conclusion, but it also doesn't leave you feeling completely gutted. I think that's probably the only way to enjoy horror based in reality like this. I hope Due's next novel comes a little sooner than this one did. I missed her.

This was also posted to my goodreads.