Hestia Strikes a Match
A Novel
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3.8 • 10 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A Best Book of the Year at NPR
A Must-Read at The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and The Orange County Register
“Steamy, smart, and hilarious.” —Oprah Daily
“Effervescent . . . Acerbically funny and tender . . . [A] supremely layered, emotionally and intellectually resonant novel for our time.” —Lauren LeBlanc, The Boston Globe
Christine Grillo’s Hestia Strikes a Match is the slyly funny story of a woman looking for love and friendship in the midst of a new American civil war.
The year is 2023, and things are bad—bad, but still not as bad as they could be. Hestia Harris is forty-two, abandoned by her husband (he left to fight for the Union cause), and estranged from her parents (they’re leaving for the Confederacy). Yes, the United States has collapsed into a second civil war and again it’s Unionists against Confederates, children against parents, friends against friends.
Hestia has left journalism (too much war reporting) for a job at a Baltimore retirement village on the Inner Harbor (lots of security). She’s single and adrift, save for her coworkers and Mildred, an eighty-four-year-old, thrice-happily-married resident who gleefully supports Hestia’s half-hearted but hopeful attempts to find love again in a time of chaos and disunion. She reckons with the big questions (How do we live in the midst of political collapse? How do we love people who believe terrible things?) and the little ones (How do I decorate a nonworking fireplace? Can I hook up with a mime?), all while wrestling with that simmering, roiling, occasionally boiling feeling that things are decidedly not okay, but we have to keep going, one foot in front of the other, because maybe, just maybe, we can still find the kinds of relationships that sustain a person through anything.
Christine Grillo’s Hestia Strikes a Match is an irreverent, incisive, laugh-out-loud interrogation of modern love of all kinds, in all its messy beauty. Equal parts wise and hilarious, it fills the heart, fortifies the spirit, and will surely help to fend off despair. In the face of the everyday wildness of our times, it asks and answers that newly constant question: How do we make a full, wonderfully ordinary life when the whole mad world is clattering down around us?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The search for love and connection continues even after society’s collapse in this fast and funny satirical tale set in our times. Abandoned by her husband as the United States descends into a second civil war, fortysomething Hestia Harris holds it together by focusing on her job at a retirement village. When her Virginian parents join the Confederacy, it’s Hestia’s octogenarian friend Mildred who rallies to her side as she searches for a new love. With a barbed wit and razor-sharp understanding of modern dating life, debut author Christine Grillo envisions how humor and romance would survive a worst-case scenario. She also gives us two tough, believable women we can root for even as the world around them falls apart. Hestia Strikes a Match dares to imagine the worst while still holding out hope for the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grillo's cheerful and misanthropic debut follows the romantic and ideological feints of a 40-something woman during the second American Civil War. It's 2023 and a dozen states have seceded to form the New Confederated States of America, while what's left of the Union limps along under the command of its first Black Madame President. Hestia Harris, a writer, tries to avoid the hordes of flag-toting Confederates trolling the libs in her precarious border state. Having heard nothing from her estranged husband in the two years since he left to join a unionist paramilitary group, Hestia turns to dating apps, screening cringeworthy profiles for Confederate leanings. The civil war element doesn't yield much of a plot, though an act of Confederate terrorism proves consequential, and as Hestia adjusts to the new normal, she finds time for sex while the ruins of democracy smolder in the background. Occasionally, the setup feels half-baked, though for the most part Grillo pulls off a clever satire of life in a divided country. At its best, this is Bridget Jones's Diary for the post-MAGA era.
Customer Reviews
more than a romcom
Excellent political and psychological insights into our near future slow civil war.