If you follow me on Threads, you know I’ve been talking about Indigent since I picked it up. I posted when I first started it; I included it in a list of books I specifically requested via my library’s suggestion system last month. It was only a matter of time before my Indigent book review dropped, and spoiler alert: I absolutely love this novel.
And a reminder, as always, that no AI was used in the composition of this review. They can pry the em dash from my cold, dead hands.
What I Liked:
- The depictions of body horror
- The cultural commentary
- The overlapping POVs
- Cannibalism. That’s it, that’s the bullet point.
What I Didn’t:
- I spent a few days trying to come up with something and literally couldn’t.
Trigger Warnings for Indigent:
- Standard Horror Warnings
- Medical Trauma
- Graphic Violence
- Ableism
- Classism
- Poverty
- Racism
- Sexism
- Use of Slurs
- Disordered Body Thoughts
- Self-harm
- Addiction
- Allusions to Suicide and Miscarriage
- Religious Trauma
- Domestic Violence
- Police Violence
Indigent Plot Summary:
In Atlanta, Georgia, is an apartment complex that exists in all of our cities. It’s filled with multifaceted people who each have their own stories, just trying to get by. It’s run by a faceless management corporation or some rich individual who doesn’t actually care about any of the tenants. Most of our complexes, though, don’t end up overrun by parasitic hivemind cannibals; most of us, unlike Xavier, the protagonist of Indigent, don’t find ourselves infected by them, changing against our will.
Indigent Book Review:
Indigent had me hooked from the first chapter. Cox builds their world (a world so similar to our own) early, fleshing their universe out in small ways that matter. Each apartment at Leigh Pierce Estates is not just occupied but lived in, its tenants fully realized from the moment they appear on the page. I adored the staunch refusal to be limited by typical points of view—in a novel that is, at its core, about the kind of community that knits itself together in the absence of official channels of help, it felt right that all members of the community were explored, if only for a paragraph or two.
Even the unnamed child living in Leigh Pierce Estates, referred to only as Anika Davis’s boy, is fully developed: He is somebody’s son, as all Black children brutalized by the American police system are. In the absence of his name, he becomes every Black child. Everyone knows the neighbor boy who lives down the street, if only in passing; everyone should feel his loss when he is shot for the color of his skin.
The main characters’ internal dialogue is expressed both intimately and interestingly: It is interspersed mid-paragraph and mid-conversation, mimicking real life train of thought. The writing style makes the book feel gritty and real (and not in a CW-reboot kind of way); Indigent feels lived in, not written, and that lends credence to its overarching themes that mimic our world in realistic, horrible ways.
This is one of the only times that age-old question of “Why don’t you just tell someone?” is easily answered in a horror novel—not just by the plot but by the structures of society at large: It is no surprise that people of color (especially Black people) who have been failed time and time again by the system are unwilling to trust government officials, especially in a dire time of need. A man in a suit is not a beacon of hope; he is a sign of gentrification, of worse things to come. Even his own internal dialogue reveals that these young men are nothing but a leg-up for his career, literal stepping stones rather than actual people.
Leena and Cyril, two white “parents” of adopted “children”, are the other side of the coin. Leena sees it as a personal affront that her “son” Ari wants to keep his mother’s language, despite the fact that Leena took him from her. She seems genuinely uncomfortable with the fact that Xavier’s mother is a good, caring woman because that makes it harder to accept that she’s allowed to take him. Her behavior (and Cyril’s marked difference between how he treats Cam and how he treats Ari and Xavier, though that’s chalked up to his being a “girl dad” by Leena) mirrors that of white families adopting children from foreign countries to “give them a better life”, only to expect them to assimilate completely and show no interest in the culture into which they were born.
Indigent is excellently written, thematically complex, and (I mean this with the utmost respect for the genre) downright disgusting. The levels of unease Cox inflicts are twofold, both cultural and squeamish. I highly recommend this novel.
Rating: 5/5 Stars ★★★★★
If you liked my Indigent book review, you’ll probably like my other ones.
Here’s every 5 star book I read last year, if you want more recs!
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