We’re not talking about Rivers Solomon enough.* I’ve read all their longer work—three novels and a novella—and I can confidently say few are writing at their level of intensity and ambition. If I’d read Model Home in 2024 when it was published, then I’d have had it in my top 10 books of the year.

Like their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, Model Home sees Solomon play into and subvert the classic elements of a well-trodden trope—in this case, the haunted house. The novel starts with Ezri Maxwell, the parent of fourteen-year-old Elijah, reflecting on their relationship with their mother. It’s initially implied but then made explicit that Ezri is struggling with deep-seated trauma related to their upbringing. Not just a fraught relationship with a possibly abusive mother, but growing up as the only Black family in an all-white gated community, living in a house—a literal model home—that may (or may not) be haunted. When Ezri and their siblings were old enough, they vamoosed. But they’ve been forced to return to the gated community following the mysterious deaths of their parents,  their bodies found in the house.

There’s nothing straightforward about Model Home; I don’t just mean the non-linear narrative. Each sibling expresses their trauma in different ways, particularly in how they reframe their understanding of the world. As such, there’s plenty of avoidance, neither sibling willing to confront, head-on, the trauma they experience. Emmanuelle, the youngest sibling, comes closest, even going on TV to blame her mental anguish on the supernatural force in the house she believes murdered their parents.

Solomon draws on the conventions of the haunted house trope—lost time, finding oneself trapped in a room, glimpsing a figure from the corner of the eye. The one bit that really got to me is the boy who, on a dare, enters the house alone, believing there’s nothing to fear, only to vanish off the face of the Earth. But the true terror, which grows increasingly throughout the novel, is the racist, passive-aggressive attitudes of the Maxwell neighbours, who “politely” question why the middle-class Maxwells would move into an all-white gated community. Why would they be so keen to live in a McMansion when there are far nicer houses elsewhere? These questions, demure but insistent, lead Ezri’s mother to domineer her children, pushing them to succeed and conform.

There’s more to this novel than what I’ve described. For example, how familial trauma fractures the relationship between siblings and how that same trauma can also infect our children, even if we’re nothing like our parents. But I will end my review here by strongly suggesting you pick up this novel (or anything by Rivers Solomon). They deserve your attention.

*I could say that of a heap of writers, but I feel it keenly here.