The Ballad of Black Tom in Around the Year in 52 Books

Jan 14, 2019 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was ok

Shelves: era-early-1900s, nyc, fantasy-and-sci-fi, horror, paranormal, retelling-a-classic, alternate-planes-and-histories, lovecraftian

Robert Suydam grinned. “You want to see what more there is.”

Malone nodded once, almost ashamed. “Yes, I do.”

Robert Suydam sighed. “It is the way of men like us. We must know, even if it dooms us.”

This was good, but when I finished, I wasn't sure what the point was. The scenes in Harlem were great, but the mystical stuff was maybe a little too sincere. I've not read much Lovecraft, so I am not familiar with the original Red Hook, but I think I can see all of the details that LaValle took fr ...more

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Dec 03, 2017 Christine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: jolabokaflod, horror

A very clever re-imagining* of The Horror at Red Hook, which is arguably Lovecraft's most racist story. Which is a shame, because the plot has some interesting possibilities that would require acknowledgement of the race issues (rich white dude snubs his family to hang out with immigrants and people of color), but allows for arm's length commentary on those issues, rather than whole-hearted endorsement.

And The Ballad of Black Tom mines a lot of that potential. The portion of the novella told fro ...more

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Nov 03, 2017 Cora rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, new-york-state, supernatural, racism, novella, new-york-city, kindle, urban-fantasy, horror

The Ballad of Black Tom is a novella that retells one of Lovecraft's worst and most racist stories (The Horror of Red Hook) from the perspective of a young African American man. The author was a fan of Lovecraft as a child and had that admiration shattered later in life when he began to recognize the racist themes of the stories he used to love. Despite this racism, LaValle still liked the monsters and horror of Lovecraft's worlds so he decided to retell one of those stories from the point of vi ...more

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Jun 12, 2017 Trish rated it it was ok

Shelves: horror, novella-novelette, zzhugos-2017, zsrc-2017-2-summer

I'm not a big fan of the horror genre, so this wasn't really my thing. ...more

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Jun 08, 2022 Jason McKinney rated it liked it

I haven't read much Lovecraft and so have not read the source material for this but I did read a synopsis of it and it seems like LaValle did an interesting variation on it. I have liked LaValle's work in the past and although this could have been a teensy bit longer, I liked this, too. The mixture of horror and social commentary works well here and I feel like this subversion of Lovecraft's racism is smart on LaValle's part. I wish there could have been a little more plot here as I thought it w ...more

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