A new novel by Rachel Harrison is always cause for excitement. Granted, she’s published four novels to date and I’ve only read two of them, but based on those two, all I need to know about a new Rachel Harrison novel is that there’s a new novel with her name on it. In Black Sheep, Vesper Wright returns home to her extremely close-knit religious family 8 years after “escaping” them.
A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle.
Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly…something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.
Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen.
When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.
Vesper has a job she is not very fond of, a waitress in a chain restaurant known for its bar and appetizers. She has one friend at this job and they both hate their boss. Fairly common in a twenty something, but not so common is that she escaped her family’s religious community six years prior to the opening of the novel. Her mother was a scream queen; a beautiful, iconic actress and star of horror movies and her father disappeared when she was entering her teens. Vesper obviously has misgivings when a wedding invite arrives in her apartment announcing the marriage of her best friend / cousin Rosie to Vesper’s first love and one-time boyfriend.
What is even more jarring to Vesper is the warm welcome she receives upon her return home. Her cousins, aunts, family, and friends are thrilled to have her back “where she belongs.” One aunt in particular, who always heaped love and adoration upon Vesper, is even more loving and doting. In other words, Vesper has some good memories and she tries to focus on those, but the welcome is still a little unsettling. Her mother, on the other hand, is as cold and emotionally abusive as she was when Vesper fled years ago. Vesper pushes for more information about her father, where he went, will he be back, what happened to him, but her mother blocks her at every turn. The familial relationship Vesper craves the most is the one most vehemently denied to her. That may not be a bad thing, though.
Harrison has proven to be very incisive with her ability to marry horror tropes with societal challenges like werewolves and sisterly love/competition in Such Sharp Teeth, friendship (ranging from true friendship bonds and toxic friendship) and supernatural/demonic possession. Here, Harrison takes her writerly scalpel to cultish religions and familial relationships. There’s a point, about 1/3 into the novel that is one of those “kick wham” moments that is best enjoyed without knowing it, and even that is too much of a spoiler. I’ll just say that I had to re-read it a couple of times.
Once that moment passes; however, Vesper’s misgivings and reasons for leaving her family make some sense. Harrison does an incredible job of portraying this “family” as a unit and as something whose veneer is pleasant and welcoming but with a dark and sickly base. She learns more secrets about her family than she ever wanted to know and is beset with a deep sense of betrayal as her knowledge deepens. Vesper questions who she is, who her parents are, and whether what she knew of the people who loved her was really true.
The novel is set in Northern New Jersey and some of the places she hinted at are somewhat familiar to me. There’s a small amusement park whose name is changed, but seems as a reference to a Land in Hope, NJ I remember visiting when I was a small child. The local references (to me a life long NJ resident) aside, Black Sheep is an outstanding novel. Within the novel’s pages is a powerful examination of family, truth, what it feels like to be an outsider everywhere, and betrayal. Rachel Harrison sets these important themes against the backdrop of dark, engaging, and delightfully sinister cult novel.
Another great Rachel Harrison novel that continues to establish her as one of the preeminent voices in modern horror.
Highly recommended
© 2023 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | 336 pages
September 2023 | Published by Berkley Publishing Group
https://www.rachel-harrison.com/ | @rachfacelogic
Excerpt available here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705659/black-sheep-by-rachel-harrison/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
