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Grievers #1
Grievers
Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.
Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit’s history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts it off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.
Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit’s history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts it off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.
188 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 7, 2021
About the author
Adrienne Maree Brown
32 books2,865 followersadrienne maree brown is the author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World and Octavia’s Parables podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 344 reviews
February 5, 2022
My Mom died unexpectedly while I was reading this book. I showed it to her when I bought it and she told me she wanted to read it after me. Since she died I've collected and examined all her loose threads, the unfinished projects, all the unrealized dreaming, and this one has haunted me in a way I can't explain. I set the book aside, unable to touch it for months. Today it hurt more the way it sat there unfinished than it did to pick up so I finally did, and read every word. adrienne paints a picture of grief that I have come to know more intimately than I ever cared to. A beautifully, thoughtfully written story that is painful in its realism and feels devastatingly possible.
April 20, 2022
This book was incredibly sad and takes an unflinching look at a city plagued by grief, loneliness, despair, poverty, gentrification, hopelessness and then the plague actually hits and the most vulnerable are left behind to fend for themselves as they die.
“Who do you call to bury your dead when you have no money?”
Wow, this book. It's not an easy read and it's not supposed to be but it's an important one. The main character, Dune, is witness to the despair overtaking her city but she stays when others flee. She stays and finds a purpose to continue on and in the end finds a little glimpse of hope.
I don't want to say too much so I'll only say give Grievers a read if you're feeling up to it. I don't think you'll have any regrets.
“Who do you call to bury your dead when you have no money?”
Wow, this book. It's not an easy read and it's not supposed to be but it's an important one. The main character, Dune, is witness to the despair overtaking her city but she stays when others flee. She stays and finds a purpose to continue on and in the end finds a little glimpse of hope.
I don't want to say too much so I'll only say give Grievers a read if you're feeling up to it. I don't think you'll have any regrets.
September 11, 2021
A bizarre illness strikes Dune’s mother, Kama, mid-sentence, leaving her frozen and inanimate, though still breathing for some few weeks longer. The doctors have no idea what this is, and Dune takes Kama home to die, eventually cremating her formerly impassioned and vibrant Black mother. Her mother who, along with her Asian American father, worked for a variety of social justice causes. Dune is left in pieces with her grief. Only her ailing grandmother, who lives with her, keeps Dune up and moving, and caring for her.
Soon after, multiple people, also black, begin showing up in Detroit's emergency rooms with their similarly afflicted family members. There is no real treatment, and no hope for a miracle cure, as doctors are mystified by the cause, and transmission, and with the knowledge that once contracted, people tend to die within a few weeks.
Meanwhile, anyone with any money, or places that can escape to, flee Detroit, leaving the black population increasingly without healthcare, food, and other basic infrastructure, in a city already whacked hard by a failing economy, lost jobs, an incompetent city government, dying neighbourhoods and failing infrastructure.
Dune though wracked by grief, travels the city for food, and uses her father's detailed, modelled map of the city, and begins tracking the deaths, more for something to do while she forages.
This was a deeply sorrowful story. Dune watches her city doe around her, even while she mourns the deaths close to her, and uses the work her parents did, and their knowledge of their city and the activist connections they had to find a way to carry on living. It’s a story of unimaginable grief, and hopelessness, and melancholy. And at the same time, I found Dune magnetic, a person who, despite her overwhelming grief, teaches herself to forage in community gardens, to cook, to preserve her foraged finds, to honour the sick and dead she finds all around her, by noting their locations, and any, possible whispered words they might still utter. It’s a small thing, but I found it so powerful.
The story ends with no hope yet in sight for a cure, but I found at the same time the ending hopeful, with Dune celebrating her birthday, and by opening her broken heart a little by accepting a possible companion.
This is a wonderful, but seriously sad work, and I’m so glad I read it.
Thank you to Edelweiss and to the Publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Soon after, multiple people, also black, begin showing up in Detroit's emergency rooms with their similarly afflicted family members. There is no real treatment, and no hope for a miracle cure, as doctors are mystified by the cause, and transmission, and with the knowledge that once contracted, people tend to die within a few weeks.
Meanwhile, anyone with any money, or places that can escape to, flee Detroit, leaving the black population increasingly without healthcare, food, and other basic infrastructure, in a city already whacked hard by a failing economy, lost jobs, an incompetent city government, dying neighbourhoods and failing infrastructure.
Dune though wracked by grief, travels the city for food, and uses her father's detailed, modelled map of the city, and begins tracking the deaths, more for something to do while she forages.
This was a deeply sorrowful story. Dune watches her city doe around her, even while she mourns the deaths close to her, and uses the work her parents did, and their knowledge of their city and the activist connections they had to find a way to carry on living. It’s a story of unimaginable grief, and hopelessness, and melancholy. And at the same time, I found Dune magnetic, a person who, despite her overwhelming grief, teaches herself to forage in community gardens, to cook, to preserve her foraged finds, to honour the sick and dead she finds all around her, by noting their locations, and any, possible whispered words they might still utter. It’s a small thing, but I found it so powerful.
The story ends with no hope yet in sight for a cure, but I found at the same time the ending hopeful, with Dune celebrating her birthday, and by opening her broken heart a little by accepting a possible companion.
This is a wonderful, but seriously sad work, and I’m so glad I read it.
Thank you to Edelweiss and to the Publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
August 11, 2021
I received a copy of this book directly from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I couldn't get into this book. The cover was haunting, and the synopsis was intriguing, but when it got down to it, the writing lacked soul. The narrative voice was a weird, detached, and emotionless drone with an uncomfortably graphic description of the world, but lacking any sort of emotion or poetry. The narrative did not flow - at all - it was like trying to translate a staccato and alien garble of words into English - except it was in English.
I think if I were a Detroit native, maybe I'd understand the world this story is set in a little more, and maybe I'd feel more connected to the character and her story, but that wasn't the case. I wish the author had put more effort into making this character-driven - focusing on how Dune was feeling, the thoughts that passed her mind… but the story read like a never-ending hum of "Dune did this. Dune did that. Dune saw this." It was so… empty and emotionally absent, and I found myself skimming to at least find some thread of interesting action to pull me forward.
In the end, I set the book aside. It just wasn't my cup of tea, and I was bored of forcing myself to try and follow what was going on.
I couldn't get into this book. The cover was haunting, and the synopsis was intriguing, but when it got down to it, the writing lacked soul. The narrative voice was a weird, detached, and emotionless drone with an uncomfortably graphic description of the world, but lacking any sort of emotion or poetry. The narrative did not flow - at all - it was like trying to translate a staccato and alien garble of words into English - except it was in English.
I think if I were a Detroit native, maybe I'd understand the world this story is set in a little more, and maybe I'd feel more connected to the character and her story, but that wasn't the case. I wish the author had put more effort into making this character-driven - focusing on how Dune was feeling, the thoughts that passed her mind… but the story read like a never-ending hum of "Dune did this. Dune did that. Dune saw this." It was so… empty and emotionally absent, and I found myself skimming to at least find some thread of interesting action to pull me forward.
In the end, I set the book aside. It just wasn't my cup of tea, and I was bored of forcing myself to try and follow what was going on.
January 25, 2022
I hope adrienne maree brown is feeling okay wherever she is
February 6, 2022
“When you lose enough people, you stop getting as close to the new ones who come into your life…Things used to be so great, so pure, so just, so perfect. We look back and excavate the most beautiful versions of our histories.”
So I have this thing that when I visit an independent bookstore for the very first time, I HAVE to purchase a book from that store. When I visited Epilogue Books —this cute bookstore/café with a Frida Kahlo mural— for the first time in Chapel Hill, NC a few months ago, I purchased a few different books (I admit it’s hard to limit myself and get only one) and amongst them was Grievers.
Sometimes I go into a bookstore and know which book on my TBR list I want to find and other times I just find a book that I fall in love with and just have to get. Grievers was the latter. The title and the dark cover attracted my attention and once I opened the book and read the mission of the Black Dawn series, I knew that I had to have it.
Dune is the protagonist of this book and her mother is patient zero for H-8, a syndrome that has plagued Detroit’s Black community and causes people to freeze mid-sentence or mid-action. Those affected by H-8 slowly drift away, losing their will to eat and drink, their faces a mask of plain grief.
Grievers is a futuristic depiction of a city that slowly turns into a ghost town. It’s not an action packed book and doesn’t provide all the answers on this syndrome, but this book instead focuses on the early stages of the breakout of a virus and depicts extreme loss. There are so many other themes in this book that make it worth reading like activism and being a leader of a community to support a specific cause, caring for the dead and the elderly, having a sense of place and duty.
My favorite quote was in a scene where Dune walked down to the basement where her father kept a mock up of Detroit: “She stopped on the stair, paused by the parallel presence and absence of her father.” How true it is that after the loss of someone it hurts so much to simultaneously feel their presence and absence in a place.
So I have this thing that when I visit an independent bookstore for the very first time, I HAVE to purchase a book from that store. When I visited Epilogue Books —this cute bookstore/café with a Frida Kahlo mural— for the first time in Chapel Hill, NC a few months ago, I purchased a few different books (I admit it’s hard to limit myself and get only one) and amongst them was Grievers.
Sometimes I go into a bookstore and know which book on my TBR list I want to find and other times I just find a book that I fall in love with and just have to get. Grievers was the latter. The title and the dark cover attracted my attention and once I opened the book and read the mission of the Black Dawn series, I knew that I had to have it.
Dune is the protagonist of this book and her mother is patient zero for H-8, a syndrome that has plagued Detroit’s Black community and causes people to freeze mid-sentence or mid-action. Those affected by H-8 slowly drift away, losing their will to eat and drink, their faces a mask of plain grief.
Grievers is a futuristic depiction of a city that slowly turns into a ghost town. It’s not an action packed book and doesn’t provide all the answers on this syndrome, but this book instead focuses on the early stages of the breakout of a virus and depicts extreme loss. There are so many other themes in this book that make it worth reading like activism and being a leader of a community to support a specific cause, caring for the dead and the elderly, having a sense of place and duty.
My favorite quote was in a scene where Dune walked down to the basement where her father kept a mock up of Detroit: “She stopped on the stair, paused by the parallel presence and absence of her father.” How true it is that after the loss of someone it hurts so much to simultaneously feel their presence and absence in a place.
February 5, 2023
Incredibly detailed and intimate. It takes a look at the nature of grief both collective and deeply personal. For all of that I couldn’t wait to finish this book and not in a positive way. I have zero interest learning what happens to Dune or Detroit next. I went in very excited and it just kind of dragged with no real information about the plague, the world, or anything other than a deeply personal look at one person.
meh-dnf
November 23, 2025Woof I DNF’d this… It was just so boring, and then my bookmark fell out and I didn’t care enough to find out where I was. It wasn’t even particularly bad per se, I just really didn’t care about the characters or the setting. Detroit itself is basically a character in and of itself in this, and I can’t say I really care about it, as a place. Womp womp.
October 25, 2021
"In real life, death is not very exciting at all. Each time, each time, you see the struggle happening in the body. None of the bodies want to die, all of the bodies are being forced to give up their hold on life through shock or exhaustion. It's not very exciting, when you can't intervene, can't be a superhero come to save the day. We start to realize life gets overwhelmed by death every single time."
The blurb details Grievers as "the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function." This plague arrives suddenly and it freezes people, their faces mildly spasming in an unfathomable expression of grief. They are entirely dissociated from their bodies and deteriorate over time until they die. Life-support systems only prolong the inevitable. There is no recovery. The illness only seems to be affecting Black people living in Detroit. The protagonist Dune, a queer woman with a Black mother and a Chinese father, is from a family deeply involved in social justice work beset with loss.
The novel is engaging with really solid prose and it's hard to believe it is brown's fictional debut. It's a homage to Detroit, the city larger than life on the page. There is a deep vein of social justice activism running throughout. I like how sci-fi/speculative fiction elements provide a nice frame to explore topics very close to home. I must say that the synopsis is a little misleading, raising expectations that brown does not substantiate inside. It also ends on a soft cliffhanger and is very much setup as the first book in an expected trilogy. So I assume all the loose threads will be addressed in the future.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
January 19, 2023
This book gripped me! The pose and writing of this story blew me away. A beautiful story of love, survival, and trusting yourself.
June 10, 2022
I struggled to finish this one, which surprised me given how much I love adrienne maree brown's writing in general. Her nonfiction is absolutely outstanding, so engaging and intimate, incredibly readable and wise. And I've enjoyed several of her short stories. This book, however, didn't engage me the same way. It had a lot of telling rather than showing, with brown listing facts, details, and backstory, rather than helping us experience the characters and the story through our senses. She relies a lot on the geography of Detroit — she will list a landmark or cross-street as a primary descriptor, but for those of us who have never been to Detroit, these references don't really contribute to a vision of the setting. This is in contrast to her Detroit-centered short story, The River, which crafted a clear picture of the city and allowed me to connect fully with the setting. I wonder if this might have been more successful as a short story, with brown editing down the exposition and distilling the important details?
September 17, 2021
This isn't an easy book to review. It somehow feels wrong to say I enjoyed something that was just so damn sad!
A mysterious illness known as H-8 is killing the people of Detroit. Attacking out of nowhere and leaving its victims in an unresponsive state, with no chance of recovery. The city is under quarantine but the morgues and graveyards continue to fill. Dune watched her mother die. Her mother, patient zero.
I loved Dunes character. Despite everything that was going on in her own home and around her, she still pushed forward and never gave up. The story itself was so interesting and I couldn't put it down. It's a sad one and the content is heavy but I enjoyed it so much and am looking forward to the next book in the Black Dawn Series.
Thanks so much to Zgstories and AK Press for my gifted copy!
A mysterious illness known as H-8 is killing the people of Detroit. Attacking out of nowhere and leaving its victims in an unresponsive state, with no chance of recovery. The city is under quarantine but the morgues and graveyards continue to fill. Dune watched her mother die. Her mother, patient zero.
I loved Dunes character. Despite everything that was going on in her own home and around her, she still pushed forward and never gave up. The story itself was so interesting and I couldn't put it down. It's a sad one and the content is heavy but I enjoyed it so much and am looking forward to the next book in the Black Dawn Series.
Thanks so much to Zgstories and AK Press for my gifted copy!
August 31, 2022
This book was A LOT. It is quite short, but there is a lot packed into it and it was all pretty heavy.
It's set in a dystopian near-future Detroit, where a mysterious syndrome is killing Black folks. It was difficult to read, as we are still in the midst of a pandemic, and while this wasn't overly similar to Covid, it was still hard to read.
While this book is a lot about death and grieving, it's also about caring. There is just so much about caring and what it means, to care for your family, for your community, for strangers, for a dog. It was something that really jumped out to me, that despite the world going to shit, that Dune was still such a caring person.
I felt like the book kind of came to an abrupt end, but it also felt like a good ending.
It's set in a dystopian near-future Detroit, where a mysterious syndrome is killing Black folks. It was difficult to read, as we are still in the midst of a pandemic, and while this wasn't overly similar to Covid, it was still hard to read.
While this book is a lot about death and grieving, it's also about caring. There is just so much about caring and what it means, to care for your family, for your community, for strangers, for a dog. It was something that really jumped out to me, that despite the world going to shit, that Dune was still such a caring person.
I felt like the book kind of came to an abrupt end, but it also felt like a good ending.
February 18, 2022
I got this book for a few reasons. First, because adrienne maree brown wrote it. In her other books, which I haven't read, I like her focus on pleasure and loyalty in movement spaces, like Big M movement, I guess, and while I'm not ready to read a non-fiction book about movement, I was open to reading a movement writer writing about fictional, future, movement-adjacent things. Second, because the cover is all black and white and and grey, which I'm into. Third, because it offered another opportunity to reflect on the last 3 years of our own real-life pandemic-in-a-pandemic-in-a-pandemic. Finally, I have my own questions about grief, having lost my own mother and father in different ways by a relatively young age to trauma and addiction. The back of the book mentions, "the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared." What's the debt of grief, it makes you wonder? Who's the debtor and who's the collector? How do you clear it? Is that possible? What magic?
You should read this book if you are Black and masculine and are in need of a main character. Also, if you are a happy loner, love Grace Lee Boggs, were raised by movement parents, have taken care of an aging house, or have taken care of aging family once they stop talking and start wearing diapers. There are so many reasons to read this book! If you are interested in alternative funerary practices, if you love Detroit, if you have a Black and an Asian parent, if you've ever lived with ashes, stray dogs or Senegalese masks.
You shouldn't read this book if you don't want to feel like a tea bag steeping in very hot and increasingly murky recollections of things like loneliness, indifferent doctors and hopeless volunteers, if you don't want to be reminded of the opioid epidemic, or the AIDS epidemic, the smell of urine or burning flesh, or the rhythms of an alcoholic.
Highlights for me include the fact that the story is more supernatural and spiritual than science fiction or fantasy, my delight in hearing the narrator's spoken voice for what seemed like the first time, the pleasure of getting to know Dune through the familiar conversational contours of lesbian exes fighting. I really enjoyed the wave of relief and excitement I felt as Dune, the main character, walks into a room full of people for the first time in a long time and talks with her auntie Elouise, who delights in Dune and affirms her and rattles off options for collaboration and connection the way organizers do. And there is a part toward the end where adrienne maree brown lets us into the thoughts of Dune's grandmother, long mute, for a whole chapter as she dies, a choice which was so refreshing, and satisfying and smart and made for one of the most beautiful moments in the book. We spend the last pages of the book with Dune as she is orphaned once and for all and I appreciated this the most, a depiction of a character in the first days of that strange and -- depending on the circumstances -- wonderful transition.
As far as the debt of grief goes, I'm still not sure what brown would like us, or me, or anyone, to think. Dune's father was killed accidentally by someone who is sorry and pays the price both through the criminal "justice" system, but also by giving Dune money, quietly in private, though Dune never spends it. To go deeper than that, I would need to talk to other people, to really figure out the possibilities. But like Dune, these days, already being a kind of orphan, and feeling kind of orphaned by the pandemic, though I know I am going to have to find people eventually, right now I am enjoying being alone, reading and eating cake with dogs.
You should read this book if you are Black and masculine and are in need of a main character. Also, if you are a happy loner, love Grace Lee Boggs, were raised by movement parents, have taken care of an aging house, or have taken care of aging family once they stop talking and start wearing diapers. There are so many reasons to read this book! If you are interested in alternative funerary practices, if you love Detroit, if you have a Black and an Asian parent, if you've ever lived with ashes, stray dogs or Senegalese masks.
You shouldn't read this book if you don't want to feel like a tea bag steeping in very hot and increasingly murky recollections of things like loneliness, indifferent doctors and hopeless volunteers, if you don't want to be reminded of the opioid epidemic, or the AIDS epidemic, the smell of urine or burning flesh, or the rhythms of an alcoholic.
Highlights for me include the fact that the story is more supernatural and spiritual than science fiction or fantasy, my delight in hearing the narrator's spoken voice for what seemed like the first time, the pleasure of getting to know Dune through the familiar conversational contours of lesbian exes fighting. I really enjoyed the wave of relief and excitement I felt as Dune, the main character, walks into a room full of people for the first time in a long time and talks with her auntie Elouise, who delights in Dune and affirms her and rattles off options for collaboration and connection the way organizers do. And there is a part toward the end where adrienne maree brown lets us into the thoughts of Dune's grandmother, long mute, for a whole chapter as she dies, a choice which was so refreshing, and satisfying and smart and made for one of the most beautiful moments in the book. We spend the last pages of the book with Dune as she is orphaned once and for all and I appreciated this the most, a depiction of a character in the first days of that strange and -- depending on the circumstances -- wonderful transition.
As far as the debt of grief goes, I'm still not sure what brown would like us, or me, or anyone, to think. Dune's father was killed accidentally by someone who is sorry and pays the price both through the criminal "justice" system, but also by giving Dune money, quietly in private, though Dune never spends it. To go deeper than that, I would need to talk to other people, to really figure out the possibilities. But like Dune, these days, already being a kind of orphan, and feeling kind of orphaned by the pandemic, though I know I am going to have to find people eventually, right now I am enjoying being alone, reading and eating cake with dogs.
May 29, 2024
Huh. I liked this - the writing is often very pretty, and as a meditation on the grief that can come with constant struggle and loss it works.
But the ending is...odd. (Is the dog magic? I've never seen a dog, let alone a feral one, VOLUNTEER to get a bath!)
I guess there is meant to be a sequel (or two) that will probably answer the questions and provide solutions. But I'm not sure why it wasn't just one regular-length book, in that case.
But the ending is...odd. (Is the dog magic? I've never seen a dog, let alone a feral one, VOLUNTEER to get a bath!)
I guess there is meant to be a sequel (or two) that will probably answer the questions and provide solutions. But I'm not sure why it wasn't just one regular-length book, in that case.
May 28, 2023
I feel like this book was made for me in this time. I related strongly to Dune in many ways but mostly in the way she handled grief. I felt comforted my Dune's rage and curiosity in the face of death and disease and felt connected to her strong sense of justice. i also adored the way her queerness was expressed throughout the book, not as a main feature of the book but something that added to her character💜
May 28, 2022
I wrote about this book here: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/i/...
March 10, 2026
Ever since my mom passed away, I read books about grief from an insatiable place, hoping if I consume enough, I’ll stumble across some ancient truth that will rectify all my unanswerable questions. I never thought that the actual answer would come from reading a book that takes root in that unknown. Early on, I would describe my grief as the kind of uncanny dream where the only thing that tips you off to its unreality is a feeing of deep out-of-placeness. The trees are not quite the right color of green. Your closest friends seem suddenly unknowable. The air feels thicker. The sun, paradoxically more scorching and duller. The world familiar enough to deceive, yet entirely alien.
I was expecting to read this through a lens required for a pandemic, exploring the figural significance of a “patient zero.” When I initially paired this book with Don't Leave Me This Way , I thought it would cast light on the way grief as frustration is heightened when it’s a product of an index case. More interestingly, I was curious how that agony responds to the inevitable grief that will succeed it, becoming an unintentional tipping point into a new world. Dune’s inner world gives us an intimate glimpse into the unsolicited responsibility of having grieved first, just before the wave crests. Not enough time to gain wisdom for those to follow, but enough to find comfort in the isolation of loss. Grief solidifies as a private rite, held close to the wound to ensure the pain’s undeniable reality.
——————————————————————————
“Death is the way the old let go, leaving the young something to cleave to, to make new as they crawl out of the earth, becoming the home for the next life, unimaginable until it begins to breathe.”
“The hierarchy of grief is measured in words and silence. The closer the death, the less words can hold it.”
“The detritus of grief became Dune's comfort, the house her prayer ground.”
“Dune didn't want to see all the bright life outside. She had a toe tapping desire to run, but the territory was inside, inside the halls of her memory. She wanted to see faces, moments, to gather up memory with more abandon. She wanted to find more of her mother.”
“She didn't believe in this enough to make it happen. She pressed her hand to her chest, wishing she had the kind of faith that gave people visions, or second sight, or whatever it was called when you saw the light of your ancestors around you Rumors, maybe grief-stricken lies, she understood that. She just wanted, so much, for one more moment, to be a daughter.”
“At some point, these trite condolences had replaced the act of grieving, of actually feeling a wave of sadness. Before, a loss could make you gasp. Before, it reached your heart. You were expected to have a coherent articulation for it, a way to say you knew something had happened and you had the right response. These meaningless words, combined with conspiracy theories, misguided cancellations and misinformation, made it too nauseating to even log on.”
“Dune wondered if the source of destruction mattered once you could build structures of skeletons.”
“what was it that could snatch so much essence out of a person that they were less motivated to survive than a flower?”
“This was really the most dreadful part of a crisis at this scale: what to do with the too-many bodies? … There were thousands of others whose stories weren't getting told, whose names were unknown, whose pictures never made the cover of anything. They became numbers, erased twice.”
“Purpose yielded bravery, or at least reframed survival.”
“Detroit was far away too. Poverty and oppression always distanced itself in the US, like it had been brought from somewhere else, could only be compared to somewhere else, somewhere Third. But this was how the American experiment started, this was all it ever was.”
I was expecting to read this through a lens required for a pandemic, exploring the figural significance of a “patient zero.” When I initially paired this book with Don't Leave Me This Way , I thought it would cast light on the way grief as frustration is heightened when it’s a product of an index case. More interestingly, I was curious how that agony responds to the inevitable grief that will succeed it, becoming an unintentional tipping point into a new world. Dune’s inner world gives us an intimate glimpse into the unsolicited responsibility of having grieved first, just before the wave crests. Not enough time to gain wisdom for those to follow, but enough to find comfort in the isolation of loss. Grief solidifies as a private rite, held close to the wound to ensure the pain’s undeniable reality.
——————————————————————————
“Death is the way the old let go, leaving the young something to cleave to, to make new as they crawl out of the earth, becoming the home for the next life, unimaginable until it begins to breathe.”
“The hierarchy of grief is measured in words and silence. The closer the death, the less words can hold it.”
“The detritus of grief became Dune's comfort, the house her prayer ground.”
“Dune didn't want to see all the bright life outside. She had a toe tapping desire to run, but the territory was inside, inside the halls of her memory. She wanted to see faces, moments, to gather up memory with more abandon. She wanted to find more of her mother.”
“She didn't believe in this enough to make it happen. She pressed her hand to her chest, wishing she had the kind of faith that gave people visions, or second sight, or whatever it was called when you saw the light of your ancestors around you Rumors, maybe grief-stricken lies, she understood that. She just wanted, so much, for one more moment, to be a daughter.”
“At some point, these trite condolences had replaced the act of grieving, of actually feeling a wave of sadness. Before, a loss could make you gasp. Before, it reached your heart. You were expected to have a coherent articulation for it, a way to say you knew something had happened and you had the right response. These meaningless words, combined with conspiracy theories, misguided cancellations and misinformation, made it too nauseating to even log on.”
“Dune wondered if the source of destruction mattered once you could build structures of skeletons.”
“what was it that could snatch so much essence out of a person that they were less motivated to survive than a flower?”
“This was really the most dreadful part of a crisis at this scale: what to do with the too-many bodies? … There were thousands of others whose stories weren't getting told, whose names were unknown, whose pictures never made the cover of anything. They became numbers, erased twice.”
“Purpose yielded bravery, or at least reframed survival.”
“Detroit was far away too. Poverty and oppression always distanced itself in the US, like it had been brought from somewhere else, could only be compared to somewhere else, somewhere Third. But this was how the American experiment started, this was all it ever was.”
April 27, 2023
Another reviewer described this series as ‘An apocalyptic fairytale of anarchic community care and interdependence’, and that’s far better than I could sum it up, but I’ll try anyway:
This book caught me off guard. I had read the synopsis, but only back when I bought it a few months ago, on a spontaneous stop in The Bookish Type in Leeds. I was lugging around a heavy bag from a trip I’d taken myself on to Hebden Bridge to try and absorb nature and figure out my own attempt at writing. I was anxiously trying not to knock anything off the shelves (or anyone else in there over) while being overwhelmed by choice. (It’s a really great shop, with a diverse range of books, I recommend it if you’re nearby!) So by this point I couldn’t quite remember what I’d ended up buying and I went in knowing very little. I’m glad I did.
It’s a pandemic book. It feels heavily influenced by Covid and the surge of uprisings and general public attention on social justice and the Black Lives Matter movements throughout that time. You can feel the power behind these words, you can feel the grief and longing and anger and, considering that Octavia E. Butler is mentioned a few times in relation to the author and their work I feel it’s relevant to say, there is maybe an Octavia E. Butler feel about it.
(I say, having only read Kindred and The Parable of the Sower (which were both amazing) - but I feel some of the same intention or style maybe in there?)
This is a short book, the first novella in a series of 3, and it’s a powerful, moving story. It's an exploration of grief, power, loss, determination, obligation, purpose and love. We centre on the character of Dune, whose mother is considered to be patient-zero of a mysterious illness that just stops people. It stops them wherever they are, whatever they are doing or saying, they just stand still and they don’t move again. Dune has already lived through the death of her father, her grandmother mute and coming across somewhat lost ever since that death, the recent break-up with her girlfriend, who she’d been with since they were teens, and now this, a pandemic, where the city she loves, that her father loved and researched and kept note of each change, from gentrification to demolition, is falling apart.
Dune finds and loses her purpose through a multitude of things, from canning food to cataloging the dead, staving off intimacy to yearning for it; grasping to the questions of ‘why’ and ‘how’ once she’s done all she can to answer the rest.
It was hard to read at times, it does hit very close to home, and if you’re not ready to read about a pandemic so close to our own I’d say put it on a list for later. But if you do feel slightly ready, it’s a beautiful, saddening, anger inducing exploration of a similar thing to what we went through. adrienne maree brown uses this fictional pandemic to bring to the surface things that were attempted to be hidden in ours. People and communities that are threatened daily through systemic violence and neglect. If these victims of the syndrome look like they were stopped in a moment of overwhelming grief then it’s because they were, and a lot of that grief may not just be close and personal, but institutional and targeted.
The writing is beautiful and emotive and I think if I was too close to grief right now I wouldn’t have been able to get through it. But maybe it could be comforting, as there’s definitely moments of feeling seen in what you may feel you alone do in grief. To me It feels like a book someone may study sometime in the future, when people are trying to make sense of this point in history; students extrapolating points to understand the social/political climate of our time. It reflects this time and shines a different kind of light on it, or maybe puts it through a sieve and shakes away some parts to reveal others more?
I want to dive straight into the second book, but it’s so recently out that I think I’ll wait a little bit so that there’s not too long of a wait for book 3 and I can still feel everything from the ones before. I really do recommend this book, but with the caveat that it may be difficult. (Happy to answer questions if people are unsure.) But I can’t wait to read more from brown because this was written so beautifully and I’m sure her non-fiction is also. I also feel that their non-fiction is probably brimming with just as much passion and power as this is. There are sentences that are going to stick with me for a long time, either just from the feeling they give me or for the time I need to ruminate on them to figure them out.
There’s not twists and turns and a huge driving plot to this, it’s an exploration of grief, community and trauma. The more I think about this book the more I feel the emotion of it all. It was so short yet look at how much it holds and how much it gives.
This book caught me off guard. I had read the synopsis, but only back when I bought it a few months ago, on a spontaneous stop in The Bookish Type in Leeds. I was lugging around a heavy bag from a trip I’d taken myself on to Hebden Bridge to try and absorb nature and figure out my own attempt at writing. I was anxiously trying not to knock anything off the shelves (or anyone else in there over) while being overwhelmed by choice. (It’s a really great shop, with a diverse range of books, I recommend it if you’re nearby!) So by this point I couldn’t quite remember what I’d ended up buying and I went in knowing very little. I’m glad I did.
It’s a pandemic book. It feels heavily influenced by Covid and the surge of uprisings and general public attention on social justice and the Black Lives Matter movements throughout that time. You can feel the power behind these words, you can feel the grief and longing and anger and, considering that Octavia E. Butler is mentioned a few times in relation to the author and their work I feel it’s relevant to say, there is maybe an Octavia E. Butler feel about it.
(I say, having only read Kindred and The Parable of the Sower (which were both amazing) - but I feel some of the same intention or style maybe in there?)
This is a short book, the first novella in a series of 3, and it’s a powerful, moving story. It's an exploration of grief, power, loss, determination, obligation, purpose and love. We centre on the character of Dune, whose mother is considered to be patient-zero of a mysterious illness that just stops people. It stops them wherever they are, whatever they are doing or saying, they just stand still and they don’t move again. Dune has already lived through the death of her father, her grandmother mute and coming across somewhat lost ever since that death, the recent break-up with her girlfriend, who she’d been with since they were teens, and now this, a pandemic, where the city she loves, that her father loved and researched and kept note of each change, from gentrification to demolition, is falling apart.
Dune finds and loses her purpose through a multitude of things, from canning food to cataloging the dead, staving off intimacy to yearning for it; grasping to the questions of ‘why’ and ‘how’ once she’s done all she can to answer the rest.
It was hard to read at times, it does hit very close to home, and if you’re not ready to read about a pandemic so close to our own I’d say put it on a list for later. But if you do feel slightly ready, it’s a beautiful, saddening, anger inducing exploration of a similar thing to what we went through. adrienne maree brown uses this fictional pandemic to bring to the surface things that were attempted to be hidden in ours. People and communities that are threatened daily through systemic violence and neglect. If these victims of the syndrome look like they were stopped in a moment of overwhelming grief then it’s because they were, and a lot of that grief may not just be close and personal, but institutional and targeted.
The writing is beautiful and emotive and I think if I was too close to grief right now I wouldn’t have been able to get through it. But maybe it could be comforting, as there’s definitely moments of feeling seen in what you may feel you alone do in grief. To me It feels like a book someone may study sometime in the future, when people are trying to make sense of this point in history; students extrapolating points to understand the social/political climate of our time. It reflects this time and shines a different kind of light on it, or maybe puts it through a sieve and shakes away some parts to reveal others more?
I want to dive straight into the second book, but it’s so recently out that I think I’ll wait a little bit so that there’s not too long of a wait for book 3 and I can still feel everything from the ones before. I really do recommend this book, but with the caveat that it may be difficult. (Happy to answer questions if people are unsure.) But I can’t wait to read more from brown because this was written so beautifully and I’m sure her non-fiction is also. I also feel that their non-fiction is probably brimming with just as much passion and power as this is. There are sentences that are going to stick with me for a long time, either just from the feeling they give me or for the time I need to ruminate on them to figure them out.
There’s not twists and turns and a huge driving plot to this, it’s an exploration of grief, community and trauma. The more I think about this book the more I feel the emotion of it all. It was so short yet look at how much it holds and how much it gives.
Read
April 19, 2025For a book that isn’t too long it felt like at least double the amount of pages, and not in a good way.
I asked the publisher for this trilogy to read and kindly received it, so I feel bad for not being into it. This is what happens though, liking a book, like a writing style, it’s all subjective. We all have different likes and dislike. This one wasn’t for me, I have two instalments of this trilogy to go, but I am not sure I’ll be reading them.
Why? I just couldn’t get into this. The narrative is just off for me. The synopsis reads wonderfully, the cover looks haunting, I find neither of those back in the book itself. Is it just the narrative? Probably not, the flow, the rhythm of the story, I just can’t connect with it. I am just not interested in it and it saddens me because reading the synopsis gave me such high hopes.
I asked the publisher for this trilogy to read and kindly received it, so I feel bad for not being into it. This is what happens though, liking a book, like a writing style, it’s all subjective. We all have different likes and dislike. This one wasn’t for me, I have two instalments of this trilogy to go, but I am not sure I’ll be reading them.
Why? I just couldn’t get into this. The narrative is just off for me. The synopsis reads wonderfully, the cover looks haunting, I find neither of those back in the book itself. Is it just the narrative? Probably not, the flow, the rhythm of the story, I just can’t connect with it. I am just not interested in it and it saddens me because reading the synopsis gave me such high hopes.
April 20, 2025
4.75 Star review
Grieving is such a difficult time, it can hit you anytime at any age. No idea on how to go on or if what you’re doing is appropriate. The book are a variety of instances of what grief may be. The authors way of writing about the black community, their struggles, the overall injustice felt very real. In the very beginning we got a clear view on strong family relationships, the connection with the city. All the effort the family and community put into making Chicago safe and prospering for the black community. I felt as I knew the characters, their personalities and homes. Because of the authors attention to details and descriptions. It was very beautiful and touching.
Grieving is such a difficult time, it can hit you anytime at any age. No idea on how to go on or if what you’re doing is appropriate. The book are a variety of instances of what grief may be. The authors way of writing about the black community, their struggles, the overall injustice felt very real. In the very beginning we got a clear view on strong family relationships, the connection with the city. All the effort the family and community put into making Chicago safe and prospering for the black community. I felt as I knew the characters, their personalities and homes. Because of the authors attention to details and descriptions. It was very beautiful and touching.
Did Not Finish
February 21, 2026I’m not really connecting to this story at the moment. Maybe I picked it up at the wrong time. The writing is beautiful and shows how intimate the grieving process can be. I really appreciate this. But ultimately, nothing is really happening to move the story forward. I was expecting a little more info about the H8 syndrome and how it works/ moves from person to person. A virus that seems to only affect the Black population? The premise sounded so interesting but ultimately it didn’t hold my attention. I feel like I would resonate with this more if I was a Detroit native.
October 1, 2021
Please let this be the start of a series from amb!!!!
January 11, 2023
I'm kind of disappointed by this, but it wasn't bad, it was kind of good? I think I'd enjoy it more if I hadn't read adrienne's nonfiction because this reads almost exactly the same as her nonfiction. Because of that it feels very-- I don't want to say preachy because that's somewhat the point but I think the desire to get the points on activism and community across she sacrifices characterization and prose? So it feels kind of Very Special Episode Of Black Mirror rather than storytelling. The characters are by far the weakest part, though there was some attempts at complexity with Marta and Vivian that I appreciated. I wasn't planning on reading the second but I'm very intrigued by the overarching plot of the virus and this book left the ending opening,though I imagine the sequel probably also leaves it open since the virus is largely a part of the allegory. I don't know. I'm happy I read it though, reading about grief is so important to me.
March 4, 2025
"It's sacred work, love. it's an altar."
That quote perfectly describes this book. This is a beautifully written story about grief, loss, a pandemic, community, survival.
An unknown pandemic hits America's Blackest city, what comes next showcases how this country slowly kills Black folks in a genocide. It parallels real life, if you're paying attention to the text.
I loved the writing, it was melancholic, slow in a way that makes you appreciate (the pacing was reminiscent of Japanese lit), and just beautiful.
"She was beginning to feel aware of her own aliveness again-not quite a desire to live, just a growing, surprising awareness that she was not dead."
This is not just a love letter to Detroit, as Ayana Jamieson says on the cover, but a love letter to life.
Would highly recommend if you like speculative fiction, dystopian but not pessimistic stories, community building.
Thank you to AK Press for a gifted copy of this book.
That quote perfectly describes this book. This is a beautifully written story about grief, loss, a pandemic, community, survival.
An unknown pandemic hits America's Blackest city, what comes next showcases how this country slowly kills Black folks in a genocide. It parallels real life, if you're paying attention to the text.
I loved the writing, it was melancholic, slow in a way that makes you appreciate (the pacing was reminiscent of Japanese lit), and just beautiful.
"She was beginning to feel aware of her own aliveness again-not quite a desire to live, just a growing, surprising awareness that she was not dead."
This is not just a love letter to Detroit, as Ayana Jamieson says on the cover, but a love letter to life.
Would highly recommend if you like speculative fiction, dystopian but not pessimistic stories, community building.
Thank you to AK Press for a gifted copy of this book.
July 9, 2021
This is a haunting book. You can feel the loneliness and despair in each word and chapter. Dune's mom is patient zero, the first to go down in a new syndrome - a new pandemic. Dune must learn to navigate the world without her mom but also without the help of most of her friends and family. She is left to sort her mother's life in the house and what her legacy is but she also needs to find who she is now that her mom is gone. It's a story about deep sadness and resilience and the will to survive when the fight to do so feels overwhelming and too much. Dune's thoughts, ideas and her need to learn everyone's story around her was deeply moving. This is a story that will make you think and definitely stick with you.
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Edelweiss. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Edelweiss. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
June 18, 2022
3.5 stars. I love a quiet SF/dystopian story, so that appealed to me here. It’s a very sad story with lots of death and despair, though. I am curious as to where it’s going since I know it’s the start of a trilogy. Pretty bleak at the moment.
Things that didn’t work so well for me were the on-the-nose aspects of the story. “H-8” syndrome which impacts only Black people. There’s also a lot of love for Detroit clear here, and anytime a story is a “love letter to x city” it doesn’t work as well for me. I don’t have any of those feelings toward any place I’ve lived.
Normally a quiet story does a lot of character work or something instead, and there just wasn’t a lot of that here. It was kind of repetitive. But there were some really moving moments (like when Dune finds Eloise or when Dune takes care of Mama Vivian).
Things that didn’t work so well for me were the on-the-nose aspects of the story. “H-8” syndrome which impacts only Black people. There’s also a lot of love for Detroit clear here, and anytime a story is a “love letter to x city” it doesn’t work as well for me. I don’t have any of those feelings toward any place I’ve lived.
Normally a quiet story does a lot of character work or something instead, and there just wasn’t a lot of that here. It was kind of repetitive. But there were some really moving moments (like when Dune finds Eloise or when Dune takes care of Mama Vivian).
October 21, 2021
adrienne maree brown is one of the great heirs to the Octavia Butler vision and tradition. This novel (so looking forward to more in this Black Dawn Series!) brings the speculative fiction focus in closely to the present times, exploring a mysterious disease originating (apparently) in Detroit and affecting (apparently) only African Americans. The title gives the important tie-in to some of what we're experiencing with COVID-19: what forms can/do/should the act of grieving the loss of loved ones take? adrienne maree brown gives us a poetically delivered story and a deep hope.
August 17, 2023
I will only say that this is a beautiful book, where nothing happens. I'm not sure how it was made into a full length novel, let alone a trilogy, but I hope at the end there's some closure to the plot instead of "everyone was sad and died, the end". With different marketing this could be a successful contemporary novel about social justice, gentrification, racial divides, and feminism but there is no horror beyond what we all saw in the 2020 news cycle.
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