A “chillingly claustrophobic perspective infuses Cherish Farrah with a deep and creepy dread,” Anita Felicelli wrote in her Alta Journal review of Bethany C. Morrow’s new social-horror novel. The pair met up in this Alta Live episode to examine the book’s themes, characters, and haunting plot.
Some readers have compared Cherish Farrah to the 2017 film Get Out for its social commentary and dramatic twists, a connection that Morrow rejected at first but now accepts, with a large grain of salt. “I’m always interested in fighting the American imagination and progressing our culture, because I don’t understand the point of anything else. So I was never going to write a blank slate character,” Morrow said, differentiating her characters Farrah and Cherish from Chris Washington, the cautious protagonist of Get Out, as well as from how other Black characters are often written. “This was the kind of project where I’m sort of airing out all of my frustration with the oversimplification and the flattening that we do, number one because it doesn’t serve a good purpose and number two because it usually helps to keep things as they are. Anything that bothers me, I just went ahead and messed with.”
Check out these links to some of the topics Morrow and Felicelli brought up this week.
- Read Felicelli’s review of Cherish Farrah in the Alta Monday Book Review.
- Buy Morrow’s Cherish Farrah on Bookshop.org.
- Check out Morrow’s other books: So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix, A Song Below Water, A Chorus Rises, and Mem.
- Sign up for the Monday Book Review newsletter and get reviews of new books in your inbox every week.
- Join us for our monthly California Book Club event tomorrow, March 17, at 5 p.m. Pacific time, with Karen Tei Yamashita, the author of I Hotel.•
