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In Rivers Solomon‘s new novel, “Model Home,” three adult siblings revisit traumas, some supernatural, that they experienced while growing up in the sole Black family in a gated suburb. Below, the author of “Sorrowland” recommends other family horror.
‘A Mercy’ by Toni Morrison (2008)
Brazenly intricate, Morrison’s ninth novel interrogates the mythos of family and the bonds — literal, in the case of the enslaved narrator Florens — that hold families together. A mother’s love, easily mistaken for a mother’s hate or ambivalence, isn’t always the mercy it was intended to be. Buy it here.
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‘Mothers Don’t’ by Katixa Agirre (2019)
A journalist, pregnant with her first baby, discovers that an old childhood friend is on trial for the murder of her twin children. A novel about what mothers “don’t” and “wouldn’t” and “couldn’t” ever do — but do. Buy it here.
‘The Fifth Child’ by Doris Lessing (1988)
A haunting and propulsive short read, Lessing’s novella tells the story of a conservative family in 1960s England whose perfect fantasy life is upended upon the birth of a fifth child. Questioning the limits of a mother’s responsibility and devotion, “The Fifth Child” is an unsettling fable about the inherent horrors of the nuclear family. Buy it here.
‘Baby Teeth’ by Zoje Stage (2018)
Seven-year-old Hanna loves her daddy to pieces but hates her mother. Suzette is a devoted and loving parent but becomes increasingly unable to cope with Hanna as the girl’s violence against her escalates. It’s a mother-daughter face-off that brings to mind Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 film, “The Bad Seed.” Buy it here.
‘Butter Honey Pig Bread’ by Francesca Ekwuyasi (2020)
Born an ọgbanje—an evil spirit that’s meant to die in childhood to haunt its mother — Kambirinachi breaks the order of the spirit world by choosing to live. This is of great consequence to herself, as she longs for return to the spirit realm, and to her twin daughters, who suffer unspeakable tragedy as a result of her untetheredness. Buy it here.
‘The Need’ by Helen Phillips (2019)
The relentless neediness of children doesn’t go away even when there’s an intruder in the house. Phillips’ novel manages to be both a gripping psychological thriller about the isolation of motherhood and an accurate account of the sheer drudgery. Buy it here.
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