Editorial review
Scorpion Grass
By Heather Thomas
The riveting setup: a murder, a confession, and a psychologist unaware of the truth she is about to uncover.
Reviewed by CANREADS
The riveting setup: a murder, a confession, and a psychologist unaware of the truth she is about to uncover.
Thoroughly gripping, Heather Thomas’s Scorpion Grass is a dizzying experience set in a future where men are believed to be extinct following the Shift. Eve Bimelech has just murdered her partner, Lottie, and although she angrily confesses to the crime, this first domestic murder since the disappearance of men raises unsettling questions. Marjorie “Jorie” Holmes, a senior psychologist and nurturer, is tasked with explaining the anomaly that is Eve. As dark truths come to light, readers are drawn into a web of hushed secrets that possess the power to fracture a matriarchal society’s carefully maintained facade of peace. Meanwhile, an unlikely individual may hold answers to the mystery—and reveal more to Jorie about herself than she ever anticipated.
Scorpion Grass delivers a chilling narrative, sharpened by Thomas’s masterful use of perspective, power, and authority. Intimate and illuminating, Thomas introduces deeply human characters who pulse with flaws, biases, intention, and emotion. Dialogue becomes more than a means of communication between these characters, as Thomas wields word choice and tone to magnify each character, their beliefs, and their position. As she delves into trust and vulnerability within relationships, the scorpion grass becomes the key in Jorie’s hand, unlocking a world that has been deliberately kept out of sight.
Disorienting yet captivating, Thomas’s world challenges the reader to grapple with what it means to be an outsider. Her perceptive treatment of sensitive subjects, including intimacy in its various forms, combines with an impeccable command of tension to give the conversations between Jorie and her partner, Zee, a charged and volatile edge. The story could, however, have given its character development more room to breathe. This is particularly evident in Jorie’s rapid attraction to Adam, which feels less convincing than the novel’s more gradually developed relationships. Because the characters carry much of the story’s weight, slower arcs would have allowed its fascinating dynamics to unfold more fully.
Through a compelling inversion of stigma, Thomas casts a revealing light on the dangers of labels. Treading the line between reality and speculative fiction, Scorpion Grass uses the disparities within its imagined society to expose the need for change in our own. Both a story of perseverance and an uneasy search for self, the novel is a provocative exploration of identity that strikes startlingly close to home.
Scrutinizing oppression and the power of a misguided narrative, Scorpion Grass closely examines rights, victimhood, and the tendency to place metaphorical cuffs on victims instead of perpetrators. For fans of Yōko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, Heather Thomas’s Scorpion Grass is an engrossing start to the Shift series, resulting in a shockingly close encounter with the dangers of single-mindedness.
—CANREADS BOOK REVIEW
Published by Wintertickle Press