She could be a shiny, magnificent version of herself.” Solomon through Aster continually questions the value of the past we have: without a living connection to the past, what are we? Are we free, or are we lost? By the novel’s end, I feel like the answer lies in the former. Aster insists on writing everything down with the utmost precision, but in the second half finds inspiration in letting go of the past. She is haunted by her mother’s ghost, and the novel is interspersed with stories from forgotten mythologies. There is no shying away from the sexual violence suffered by Black women at the hands of ship guards though I was prepared, I would still advise readers to be cautious in case such content is distressing.Īster bounces from Matilda’s X deck belly to a party in E deck and everywhere in between, through vent and field in a jagged spiral into the heart of Matilda. Without his title, I think he would be nearly as at-risk as Aster of Othering and extrajudicial violence for his gender nonconformity. Theo serves as a counterpoint to Aster: while occupying a position of privilege as Heavens’ Hands Made Flesh - and white-passing at that - he is the effeminate bastard son of a Black woman. Solomon interrogates gender first and foremost, perhaps, in Aster herself, who is ostracized for her “mannishness” (which stems from a hereditary hormonal imbalance). My reading notes there say “Gendered decks? Hm.

What first caught my attention was on page two, when Aster is attending to a child named Flick and misgenders them - on Q deck, Aster’s home, every person is assumed to use she/her pronouns, while T-deckers use they/them pronouns. Outside of the sharecropping work she does along with other dark-skinned residents (prisoners?) of the spacefaring HSS Matilda, Aster is an outstanding medic in her own right as well as the assistant to her longtime friend Theo Smith, the Surgeon General. Aster Grey is, like her name suggests, a spot of light and life within the unforgiving expanse. An Unkindness of Ghosts follows Aster’s quest for the truth about her mother’s death, a journey constellated with a cast of characters through whom the novel explores the many ways we find a sense of belonging.

I was delighted by their debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts, with its more nuanced exploration of familiar themes: belonging in both past and present, ancestry and Othering.

Rivers Solomon has been living in my mind rent-free since I read their 2019 novella The Deep earlier this summer.

Rivers solomon an unkindness of ghosts