Lone Women

A Novel

English language

Published Dec. 21, 2023 by Random House Publishing Group.

ISBN:
978-0-525-51208-0
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4 stars (3 reviews)

Blue skies, empty land—and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere, and an “absorbing, powerful” (BuzzFeed) new vision of the American West, from the award-winning author of The Changeling.

“Propulsive . . . LaValle combines chills with deep insights into our country’s divides.”—Los Angeles Times

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023: The New York Times, Time, Oprah Daily, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Essence, Salon, Vulture, Reader’s Digest, The Root, LitHub, Paste, PopSugar, Chicago Review of Books, BookPage, Book Riot, Tordotcom, Crime Reads, Kirkus Reviews

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.

The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California …

1 edition

reviewed Lone Women by Victor LaValle

Lone Women

4 stars

Lone Women is a novel set around 1915 about Adelaide Henry, a lone black woman who travels alone to Montana lugging a mysterious locked steamer trunk and her family's secrets.

I enjoyed all the spooky elements of this story, and how the steamer trunk secret is a slow burn horror reveal, starting from Adelaide's fear when anybody looks too closely at it, and continuing with disappearing folks and other horror when it opens. However, about three quarters through there's a full reveal that feels disingenuous to the reader with details that Adelaide has elided the whole time. This moment just felt a little contrived to me, and as a reader I didn't believe that she had a reason not to mention it until then. I wrote some more spoiler-filled thoughts in this comment.

Overall, I dug the frontier vibes, folks learning to trust and care for strangers (literally, people …

Endlich ein spannender Western

4 stars

Fand das Hörbuch zufällig in vöbb/Libby und kann es wärmstens empfehlen.

(Werde meta bleiben weil ich finde, dass jede Inhaltsangabe schon einiges spoilert. Da waren allerdings auch Wendungen drin, die ich nicht erwartet hätte, Hut ab.)

Endlich ein Western der spannend ist, Horror Elemente enthält, in allen Hauptrollen Frauen hat und ohne sexualisierte Gewalt auskommt. Dazu kommt noch ein guter Schuß queere Repräsentation, Women of Color als Protagonistinnen und was mich freut: Gesellschaftskritik, die nicht mit dem Holzhammer kommt. Fand es richtig gut gemacht, größtenteils spannend und auch das Ende glücklicherweise sehr anders als ich es erwartet hätte. Oh und es ist auch immmerhin nicht purer Settler-Kolonialismus, which is nice.

Eine der letzten Plot-Linien hätte ich gerne weiter ausgeführt gehabt, aber das passt schon so.

Content-Hinweis allerdings für einiges an Gewalt (auch gegen Frauen weil naja, Western), Rassismus und Lynchjustiz.

avatar for gabuwu@bookwyrm.social

rated it

4 stars