Ash
A Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A dazzlingly original and bleakly funny debut novel that follows one harried working mother before and after a devastating weather event, capturing the everyday wonders and infuriating indignities of mothering in a time of ecological crisis.
Thea spends her days among stubborn animals, many of which are massive or in pain, but they’re not really what’s causing her to feel overwhelmed. A vet at a midsized rural practice, she’s been called back from her maternity leave early to find herself awash in meetings, family mealtimes, farm visits, her boss’s search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children, Eli and Lucy. Her husband would like to know what he should get his mother for her birthday, which she’s had to remind him is next week—Calm down, she tells the reader, I’m not going to have an affair. This is a woman who knows intimately what it is to tend to a small child’s fever in the small hours of the night while The Bachelor glows silently from her phone.
And then, suddenly, in the time it takes to drive home from a rare evening out, everything is upended. Nothing is constant, now, except for the ash, and Thea is left marveling at the things that change and the ones that don’t at what may very well be the end of the world.
Propulsive and poetic, Ash is a novel that burns with rage and joy at once. Remarkably lithe and multidimensional, it celebrates the small miracles that thrive even in motherhood’s darkest moments.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A volcanic eruption forces a rural veterinarian to cut short her maternity leave in the uneven debut novel from New Zealand poet Wallace. With ashfall covering the streets of the unnamed narrator's small town, day cares close, office workers report from home, and grocery store shelves stand empty. But the natural disaster is only one battle among many for the narrator, a working mother who struggles with crying children, an inattentive husband, mountains of laundry, and the biases of her male coworkers. When a position opens at her midsize veterinary practice, she alone advocates on behalf of a younger female colleague. One of her children develops a respiratory illness from the thick, gray ash, which makes "everything more urgent." Despite the intense subject matter, the plot slips into clichés, such as the depiction of a sexist male colleague. Still, the narrator offers impactful reflections on motherhood, which for her feels "like shattering your body into pieces, gluing them back together so the light shines through the seams, then flooding it with greenery, your whole insides a garden fit to burst." The result is a somewhat pedestrian story punctuated by distinctive bursts of lyricism.
