Mormama

by Kit Reed

Overview

MORMAMA is a riveting supernatural, southern gothic tale from Kit Reed, the author of Where.

*2018 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST HORROR*
*Locus 2017 Recommended Reading List*
One of io9's 20 Amazing New Scifi and Fantasy Books for May
Kirkus' the Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Reads for May

Dell Duval has been living on the street since his accident. He can't remember who he was or where he came from. All he has is a tattered note in his pocket with an address for the Ellis house, a sprawling, ancient residence in Jacksonville. He doesn't know why he's been sent here.

In the house, Lane and her son Theo have returned to the ancient family home—their last resort. The old house is ruled by an equally ancient trio of tyrannical aunts, who want to preserve everything. Nothing should ever leave the house, including Lane.

Something about the house isn't right. Things happen to the men and boys living there. There are forces at work one of which visits Theo each night—Mormama, one mama too many.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765390455
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/30/2017
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,145,790
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.64(d)
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

Kit Reed (1932-2017) is the author of the Alex Award-winning Thinner Than Thou and many other novels, including The Night Children, her first young adult work. Reed has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and has been a James W. Tiptree Award finalist. Kit Reed lived in Middletown, CT, and was Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Mormama

“Some horror novels, though, feel timeless whenever you happen to read them, and Kit Reed's wondrous new ghost story Mormama seem to me one of those.” —New York Times Book Review

“William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County by way of Mervyn Peake’s ‘Gormenghast.'”—The Wall Street Journal

“It’s a smart and chilling tale on par with the best of Shirley Jackson, by an author who helped define the American Gothic.”—The Village Voice

"The power of Reed's [Mormama] comes from the layering of a chorus of voices...mirrored and reinforced by a social environment that runs on a toxic mix of privilege, public refinement, and propriety that conceals private selfishness and cruelty.... Ghosts are scary, but that kind of bottomless, banal egotism shrivels and kills the soul. Or worse, preserves it." —Locus

"In true southern gothic style, this tale is as much a ghost story as it is an allegory for the crumbling ways of the Old South." —Booklist

"A coherent and entertaining narrative tapestry with an oppressive sense of supernatural threat, psychological intrigue and spiritual despair." —The Morning Star

“Unflaggingly smart, inventive, and weirdly, brusquely funny.” —Peter Straub

“A harrowing supernatural Southern gothic—completely convincing, and scary in all sorts of ways.” —Tim Powers, author of Hide Me Among the Graves

“Fitting on the horror scale somewhere between Shirley Jackson and John Farris, this tale of generational hauntings and family secrets, with an amnesiac filling in as Greek chorus, is one of the best predatory house tales I've come across in many years.” —Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, winner of the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award

“Through a chorus of living and dead voices, all of which know something but none of which know everything Mormama offers the story of a family trauma that has come to infect a place. A terrific story that keeps you on your toes to the very end.”—Brian Evenson, author, The Open Curtain

From the Publisher

Some horror novels…feel timeless whenever you happen to read them, and Kit Reed's wondrous new ghost story…seems to me one of those…Reed, who has been writing fiction of all kinds for nearly 60 years, certainly knows how to construct a traditional spooky tale, and she does that expertly in Mormama, alternating different voices (some living, some not), laying out complex family relationships over several generations, managing a complicated plot and then drawing everything together in a spectacular, and unexpectedly moving, conclusion. As a genre-fluid writer of longstanding, she also knows that in every structure, no matter how solid, there has to be some give in the building materials. Reed isn't afraid to bend the form she's working in, mostly with a breezy tone and frequent flashes of spiky wit.

The New York Times Book Review - Terrence Rafferty

04/03/2017
Veteran novelist Reed returns to her Southern roots in this unsatisfying gothic fantasy, a follow-up to 2015’s Where. Theo and his mother, Lane, are forced to return to the crumbling ancestral house in Jacksonville, Fla., where Lane’s three widowed aunts still dwell. Theo quickly realizes there are two more occupants of the house: Dell, an itinerant man with amnesia who has taken up squatting in the basement, and the titular Mormama, the long-dead matriarch of the family. While Lane looks for a job and a way out, and Theo ignores Mormama’s warnings about the house’s fatal effect on the family’s boys, Dell tries to understand what his connection is to the house and digs deeper into its secrets. Despite the intriguing promise of a good ghost tale, the story fails to fuse together, and it ends with no resolution or offer of clarity. Instead, the house’s ancient histories are retold by a dozen different voices, retreading the same ground until the reader feels as trapped as the characters. Agent: John Silbersack, Trident Media Group. (May)

Publishers Weekly