House of Cotton
A Novel
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3.2 • 19 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
FINALIST for the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award • NPR BEST BOOK OF 2023 • An enchanting Black Southern gothic debut, perfect for readers of Mexican Gothic... "Fresh, haunting...In her roller-coaster ride of a gothic debut novel, Monica Brashears upends expectations at every turn." —The New York Times
“Every page, every scene, every sentence of Monica Brashears’s debut novel House of Cotton dazzles and surprises. An intense, enthralling, and deeply satisfying read!” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
"A new, dazzling, and essential American voice." —George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo
One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, Magnolia Brown encounters a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton. He offers to turn her luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home—where she will pose as clients’ dead loved ones. She accepts. Despite earning more than she’s ever made, Magnolia finds that her problems are fattening along with her wallet. And when Cotton’s requests become increasingly strange, Magnolia discovers there’s a lot more at stake than just her rent.
This roller-coaster ride of a novel upends expectations at every turn. A bold new talent in the gothic tradition but with a style all her own, “Brashears offers a fresh new perspective on Appalachia and the American South, and Magnolia’s rich voice will echo with readers long after the pages are closed” (Shelf Awareness).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Monica Brashears’ stunning debut novel—a story of poverty, ghosts, and being Black in the American South—is sure to get people talking. Nineteen-year-old Magnolia Brown is barely getting by in Knoxville, Tennessee. Everyone in her family is either estranged or dead, her sleazy landlord wants to swap rent for sex, and she’s haunted by the ghost of her grandmother. And when Magnolia accepts a creepy job from a local funeral director, things get really weird. Brashears ladles in enough vibrant local color to make you feel like a Knoxville native, and her dialogue flows so easily, you’d swear it was overheard at the supermarket rather than written by an author. And all that’s before you even consider the story’s incisive ideas about race, gender, and religion. House of Cotton is a survivor’s story that speaks volumes about the human spirit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Brashears's haunting and macabre debut, a young Black woman navigates her own grief while shouldering the burdens of others. Magnolia Brown, 19, is living life hand-to-mouth in Knoxville, Tenn., when a representative for Cotton and Eden Productions, a shady side project of a local funeral parlor, offers her an unorthodox modeling job: she'll be made up to impersonate deceased loved ones so that bereaved family and friends can say their farewells over Skype. Meanwhile, Magnolia copes with the recent death of her beloved grandmother, Mama Brown, who raised her after her father was killed on a construction site and her mother got in trouble with the law. Now, Mama Brown's ghost appears to Magnolia, claiming she's haunted by a boogeyman-like Bible salesman who scared her as a child. Magnolia is a wonderfully complex character, sympathetic to the bereaved but not sentimental ("There ain't no Bloody Marys or Candymans," she tells Mama Brown. "Only men who too happy to find a woman alone"), and fiercely independent as she gratifies her sexual desires via Tinder hookups. Brashears skillfully portrays the ease with which Magnolia pivots from her interventions in the spirit world to her interactions with Cotton and Eden's paying customers. This is a fine testament to resilience.
