This year Amber gave me books for my birthday. No surprise there. From the day I introduced her to literature through the adventures of Ruthie Rabbit at the seashore reading has been an integral part of our relationship. I like to think it's part of the inspiration for her career as an author. Anyway one is a guide to querying agents for my own manuscript. Getting published is so much harder than writing.
The other two are fiction. Amber knows just what I like. She has this knack of picking something I never would pick up on my own but once I start reading I totally love. I experienced this recently when she gave me the Asylum trilogy as my prize in the family readathon. And I experienced it again with Taylor Grothe's Hollow.
Cassie, Grothe's narrator, grew up with three close friends--Jac, Blake, and Mel--in small town Deep Glen. Then four years ago she and her parents had moved to New York City. It hadn't worked out well. Cassie had always struggled to understand the social cues that seemed to come so easily to her peers. Bullies had detected her week spot and attacked, causing her to fall apart in her school cafeteria and be diagnosed with generalized anxiety, trichotillomania, and autism. After her parents divorced Cassie and her mother returned to Deep Glen. When we meet Cassie she's standing in front of Donahue's Donuts.
"This had been her hangout with her best friends, and her mom had urged her just to go back to how everything had been four years ago. In her heart of hearts, Cassie wasn't so sure that was even possible. But she could at least hold it together, right?
She wouldn't let a single crack show in her mask."
Cassie's old crew isn't exactly welcoming. When she didn't keep up enough virtually they felt that she had abandoned them, even Jac with whom there had been the potential for being more than friends.
A week long camping trip to work out the issues starts off disastrously. The first night there's too much alcohol, arguments...
...Cassie wakes up the next morning alone, seemingly abandoned in a place with rugged terrain where a bunch of people have gone missing recently, panicking and overwhelmed. The icing on the cake--she gets caught in a terrible storm and injures her ankle...
...and suddenly there's someone guiding her to safety in a small cluster of homes. Kaleb makes her tea, and helps her warm up. His mother sets her ankle. The small community welcomes her with food and shelter. As she gets to know them she feels like she is accepted for herself for the first time. Unlike when she is with "normies" she doesn't feel like she has to wear a mask.
Of course there are some weird things about the community. Crows are always around in huge numbers, their feathers attached to people's clothes. Creepy ass wooden dolls look down from the eaves. And the people speak a strange secret language. But they don't seem that important...
...until Cassie picks up some more ominous red flags like their reluctance to help her find her friends...
...Are they altruistic helpers or dangerous cult members? Are they the reason people go missing? Will she be able to find her friends and get home?
Amber and I highly recommend Hollow. One key reason is that the narrative is woven together so seamlessly. When you create a world/community/realm there are so many elements that have to mesh. One slip up can shatter the reader's belief and engagement. Hollow is the epitome of seamless. The reader stays caught up in the created space right through to the end.
We also appreciate Grothe's narrator being autistic and having anxiety. There are not nearly enough neurodivergent protagonists in current literature. In Hollow we see the cluelessness and cruelty neurotypicals can show and how many autistic people struggle to be seen and valued for their authentic selves.
But we do have one warning. Do not pick Hollow up until you have the time to engage with it. It's so well crafted--so easy to get caught up--in you will not want to put it down. Even with a term paper due tomorrow or a hungry cat whining to be fed.
On a purrrsonal note, Sunday there was another fine event, this time a literary one. It was held in Bangor Beer Co. First Amber and some other local authors did readings. They presented a real diversity of poetry and prose. Amber, of course, did super fantastic. Then there was a costume contest. There were seven of us. I cosplayed as Rizzo from Grease. Each of us explained our costume. Then there was voting by applause 👏. I had a decisive win. My prize was a shirt that says literate, quite fitting I'd say. I got the chance to do some reading near my flowers. So it was a great day in a great weekend.
A great big shout out goes out to all who participated in the event, especially my super talented older daughter.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my Galaxy
