Lakewood

December 2, 2019
In Giddings’s chilling debut, Lena Johnson takes a leave from college after her grandmother dies and must find a way to financially support herself and her mother, who suffers from a mysterious but debilitating illness. Serendipitously, she receives an invitation to apply to the Lakewood Project, a series of research studies about memory. If chosen, Lena will receive a hefty paycheck and, crucially, insurance that would cover all of her mother’s health-care costs. After an invasive screening process that includes uncomfortable questions about race and being injected with strange substances, Lena is invited to participate. This involves moving to Lakewood, a nearby town in Michigan, and leading a double life. After signing an NDA, she’s instructed to tell her family and friends, through monitored communication, that she works for a shipping company. In reality, she and the other participants—all of them black, Indian, or Latin—must undergo grueling evaluations and take part in experiments (such as eye drops that change eye color, and being put on a diet of cream pellets only) that can have fatal consequences, all under the watch of “observers,” all of whom are white. Though the book’s second half doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the first, Giddings is a writer with a vivid imagination and a fresh eye for horror, both of the body and of society. This eerie debut provides a deep character study spiked with a dose of horror.

February 1, 2020
A first-time novelist offers medical horror with a political edge. Lena Johnson's grandmother has just died, leaving behind a staggering amount of debt. Lena's mother is debilitated by an illness--or collection of illnesses--no one can diagnose or cure. When Lena is offered a position that pays an incredible sum of money and full health-insurance coverage for her mom, she feels that she has no choice but to leave college and become a research subject in a secret government project. Her participation requires her to lie to family and friends about what she's doing, and she signs a nondisclosure agreement that discourages her from ever revealing the torture she and other people of color will endure at the hands of white doctors. The historical underpinnings of Giddings' premise are obvious. Lena follows in the footsteps of black men whose syphilis went untreated even though they were promised health care for joining the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and her experience echoes that of the enslaved women James Marion Sims brutalized while testing new gynecological techniques. It might seem that, unlike them, Lena has a choice, but does she? The position she finds herself in after her grandmother's death is a reminder that hundreds of years of structural racism have made it difficult for black families to accumulate and pass on wealth. But this novel isn't just about Lena's physical ordeal. The emotional and mental strains of being black in an environment seemingly designed to punish blackness--and the necessity to pretend that everything is fine--are devastating, too. At the novel's beginning, Lena is in the habit of noting when a person she's describing is white, a powerful rejoinder to the widespread tendency to consider whiteness the default American identity. Toward the end, she has to consciously remind herself that she is still human. In terms of style and storytelling, Giddings doesn't always succeed, but there's no denying the potency of her message. This is a thought-provoking debut, and Giddings is a young writer to watch.

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January 1, 2020
After Lena Johnson's grandmother dies, the millennial is overwhelmed with the responsibility of taking care of her sickly mother, who has no insurance and a growing stack of unpaid bills. Lena drops out of college and moves back home to help. After multiple job interviews, she receives an invitation to participate in the Lakewood Project, a series of research studies about mind, memory, personality, and perception. Lena accepts the job, with its promises of health insurance for her mother and a sizable bank account. She never anticipates the isolation caused by not being able to fully communicate about the project with her family and friends, or the terrifying effects of the experiments themselves, which turn her eyes blue and blur the lines between reality and an alternate state. As the truth about the experiment reveals itself, Lena discovers a connection that almost answers all her questions. Giddings writes with eloquence, walking readers through the complicated world of Lakewood. They'll be eager to turn each page and read what happens next.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)