in terms of books, she was doing fine

CONTENT WARNINGS: physical abuse, self harm, injury detail, racism, animal death, mild sexual content, violence, cannibalism, incest, pregnancy/childbirth

OVERVIEW: I picked this book up on a whim after seeing it on a display at my local indie bookstore. I'm glad I did; this book was much, much better than what I was expecting, and a very impressive debut. Scholfield is a master at delving deep into character interiority and their prose is something to be savored. I can't wait to read more from them.

WRITING: Scholfield's prose is perfectly balanced between showing and telling, and I love the way they structure sentences into something descriptive and melodic. It's clear that Scholfield has an ear for what sounds good, and the visceral, raw language made the story all the more vivid and moving.

PLOT: The plot of this book follows Judith "Jude" Rice, a forty-one year old Black woman who escapes her abusive mother's house in the 1960s and takes refuge in a haunted house in the woods in Georgia. There, she makes a home for herself and meets a mysterious woman named Nemoira, who brings out Jude's best and worst tendencies. Jude thus has to grapple with her growing desire for Nemoira as well as her own past and generational trauma.

This story is largely about Jude's journey and her complex feelings about her family. Scholfield is brilliant at tackling large, oftentimes dark themes and handling them with care and respect, all while maintaining complexity and facing it head on (rather than simplifying or avoiding the difficult questions).

I also liked the atmosphere around all the places where Jude lives - both her mother's house and the house in the woods. Both are haunted in their own ways, and Scholfield makes each feel unique and loaded with history.

Scholfield is also good at writing violence and blood and gore, meaning that none of ot feels senseless and all of it feels emotionally weighted. Parts of this book are hard to read because they are graphic, but never did I feel like Scholfield was doing it for the sake of empty shock. It all felt rooted in the body, which I think played an important role in Jude's journey and how she felt existing in her world.

CHARACTERS: Jude, our protagonist, is interesting and sympathetic and one cannot help but want to follow her. I think this is because Scholfield does such a good job making her feel complex; Jude is a victim but also has violent anger problems of her own. She craves companionship, yet her relationships are all fraught. She knows what was done to her was wrong, but she still loves the people who hurt her. Watching Jude work through all these conflicting feelings made her story compelling, and Jude herself felt grounded and flawed in all the ways I like seeing in characters.

Nemoira, the mysterious woman, was interesting to analyze in relation to Jude. I don't want to say much about her because I don't want to spoil anything in my review, but I really like how Nemoira was used to both get Jude to examine herself and to free Jude from some of her past.

Jude's aunts - Vivian and Phyllis - were also complex and flawed in ways that I think made the exploration of trauma more nuanced.

And lastly, Jude's mother, was simultaneously sympathetic and abusive, continuing a cycle of violence and trauma. I appreciated the way her story was handled, and by the end, I thought the way she was viewed by Jude her aunts was more meaningful than simply condemning her.