Thursday, July 21, 2022

Horror Book Review: Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow

 





Cherish Farrah is a psychological/social horror novel written by author Bethany C. Morrow, most well known for her YA duology, A Song Below Water and A Chorus Rises, but also her short novel Mem.  I've really enjoyed all three of those works, with her YA works using a more magical version of our world to deal with race, prejudice, teen pressure, social media culture and hatred, and the usage of minorities by others against other minorities, and Mem featuring some really interesting ideas about memory and one's self/personhood.  So I was interested to see what she'd do with this novel, advertised as a psychological thriller/horror, even if it didn't appear to be science fiction or fantasy, my usual interest.  

And well, Cherish Farrah is a gripping psychological horror, featuring a kind of sociopathic protagonist in 17 year old Black girl Farrah Turner, raised by black parents among a rich white country club community, who reacts to her family's finances falling apart by trying to manipulate herself into her black friend Cherish's White family instead of her own.....only to find things aren't quite like she expects.  It's a story dealing obviously with race, with class, with privilege, and how both Whites and Blacks perceive that privilege and prejudice - and most significantly a story about how much control a person without privilege truly has over their own narrative.  It largely works pretty well, leading to an incredibly chilling ending, although I think it takes a few too many shortcuts in its final act for that ending to truly work perfectly.  

Some more specifics after the jump, with some spoilers in ROT13.  


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
17 year old Farrah Turner has grown up one of the few black kids in her rich country club community - and the only one with Black Parents.  Her boyfriend Tariq has a white father, and her best friend Cherish Whitman was adopted by the rich white Whitman family - and seems so naive at times that Farrah thinks of her as "WGS" - White Girl Spoiled.  Farrah is enormously jealous of Cherish - who is coddled and adored by her family, given everything she could want, and allowed to ignore the prejudice around her in a way she never could....meanwhile, Farrah's own parents, especially her mother, continuously warn her about certain acts and behaviors, about perceptions, and...worst of all from Farrah's perspective, lie to her at times and try to control her.  And if there's one thing Farrah cannot abide, it is letting anyone else have control of her life.  

So when Farrah's family unexpectedly faces foreclosure, Farrah decides she's had enough with her parents - and that she will manipulate the Whitmans such that she can stay with them instead of her own parents, and become their daughter just as much as Cherish.  But as Farrah stays with the Whitman's strange things keep happening: debilitating illnesses, strange dreams, friends acting weird, and Farrah begins to discover things about Cherish and her family that don't fit her preconceptions.  And soon, as she digs more and more into what's going on and tries to fit everything into her worldview, she discovers that she might not be in control of her own narrative after all.....
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Cherish Farrah stars, and there's no other way to say it, a sociopathic protagonist in Farrah, who tells the entire story in first person.  It's not entirely Farrah's fault - although her mother suggests it started way back when she was a baby - she's been raised in a rich White Community, where her parents have both tried to raise her to be part of this community, with her parents never being open until it's too late about how their finances might ever be on shaky ground and might force them to go elsewhere, and at the same time her mother has attempted to impart to her the important lessons about being a black girl in a racist world - lessons only furthered by the treatment Farrah finds from some others at school.  And Farrah has grown up spoiled and entitled - although she thinks this is true of Cherish more than herself - believing that she should get anything she wants, that her parents' financial failures is a crime against her, and that her mother's attempts at trying to explain to her how the world works and that they need to adapt are horrifying attempts at controlling her that cannot be forgiven.  Again, it's not wholly her fault - her parents' attempts to shelter her and make her believe she can be a part of this rich white community they don't actually fit into is in part responsible, but Farrah has taken it the absolute worst way.  

And then there's Cherish: a black girl adopted by a white rich family, who seems to Farrah to have it all.  She's spoiled and never in financial trouble and can go on any vacation she wants, can ignore the dangerous boyfriend's negative attributes, and her family will do anything for her - and Cherish can seemingly ignore all the prejudice and racial comments/attitudes thrown at her by her peers.  And so Farrah both loves and hates Cherish: she loves her as the ideal of what she wishes she could have, and she hates her for that very same fact, and for the fact that while Cherish is not manipulative, she never has anyone seemingly making demands of her.  And Farrah is basically a bitch of a friend to Cherish as a result, performing microaggressions and minor bits of harm towards Cherish, playing a game where they each hold each other under, etc. - and to Farrah's mind, Cherish deserves it and just thinks it harmless.  

But of course, Farrah's mother has a real point, as she says in this book: "We know there's always another narrative, and we don't have the luxury of ignoring it, even if we think it suits our needs".  And so the rich White people, holding themselves apart from the poorer or even middle class people in the area, and especially from the other Black people in the area, have their own narrative to maintain....one which Farrah doesn't realize until too late, in a horrifying fashion, they have constructed in their own unthinkable ways.  Farrah's discovery of this, and her attempts to put 2 and 2 together - something the reader will have trouble doing because Farrah's own perspective makes her not in the right position to realize certain things - is what colors the book in horror, as more and more things start going awry: First Farrah gets horribly sick, then Farrah's boyfriend starts acting like a different more cocky and arrogant person, then she hears in dreams Cherish talking to her mom in a way that makes her seem like she isn't the naive spoiled girl, and might be more malicious than it seems, then Cherish's father treats her for a wound with a harsher remedy than she would ever have chosen herself....it's a social and psychological horror that spirals and spirals until the final reveal.

That said, part of the conclusion* didn't quite ring true to me, with one part of the reveal giving way to Farrah's plan to prove what she now knows to be the truth in devastating fashion, and I'm not sure that totally works.  But the result is still a very strong horror dealing with race and class, one that is well worth your time.  

*Spoiler in ROT13: Va gur raq, Sneenu qvfpbiref gung obgu Purevfu'f cneragf naq gur sngure bs ure oblsevraq Gnevd unir n cyna sbe fubjvat gurve oynpx puvyqera ubj unefu gur jbeyq vf gb gurz: gb hfr nabgure oynpx puvyq gung gurl ybir nf gur "Juvccvat Obl" gurl jvyy chavfu fb gurl pna nibvq unezvat gurve bja puvyq.  Sbe Gnevd, gung'f gur obl uvf sngure gur Whqtr gnxrf va nf n jneq, ohg sbe Purevfu, gung Juvccvat Tvey vf Sneenu urefrys, jub gur Juvgznaf ubcr gb hfr nf fbzrbar gb grnpu Purevfu gung gur jbeyq vf unefu gb crbcyr yvxr ure ol unezvat ure.  Fb Sneenu trgf Purevfu gb uryc ure qvfpbire guvf ol trggvat Purevfu'f zbgure gb pbzr bhg gb ure byq cbby sbe n pbasebagngvba.  

Ohg guvf bpphef bayl nsgre Sneenu qvfpbiref gung gur wbheany Purevfu jnf xrrcvat gnyylvat fbzrguvat Sneenu vf qbvat vf gnyylvat gvzrf gung Sneenu unf unezrq ure, fubjvat Sneenu gung fur vf whfg nf zhpu n zbafgre nf gur fbpvbcnguf hfvat ure nf n juvccvat tvey.  Va gung pbagrkg, rfcrpvnyyl tvira gung gurer'f abg gvzr sbe erpbapvyvngvba, vg'f xvaq bs fgenatr gung Purevfu vf jvyyvat gb tb nybat jvgu Sneenu'f cyna evtug nsgre, naq gung fur'f jvyyvat gb tb fb sne nf gb zheqre ure zbgure ng Sneenu'f hetvat. 



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