St. Ivo
A Novel
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3.9 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Hershon maintains a quiet terror throughout this slim, eccentric novel. . . Fiction full of complexity, devoted to reality. And in the end, a larger sense of purpose crashes down in a satisfying burst."
--Danya Kukafka, The New York Times Book Review
Over the course of a weekend, two couples reckon with the long-hidden secrets that have shaped their families, in a charged, poignant novel of motherhood and friendship
It’s the end of summer when we meet Sarah, the end of summer and the middle of her life, the middle of her career (she hopes it’s not the end), the middle of her marriage (recently repaired). And despite the years that have passed since she last saw her daughter, she is still very much in the middle of figuring out what happened to Leda, what role she played, and how she will let that loss affect the rest of her life.
Enter a mysterious stranger on a train, an older man taking the subway to Brooklyn who sees right into her.Then a mugging, her phone stolen, and with it any last connection to Leda. And then an invitation, friends from the past and a weekend in the country with their new, unexpected baby.
Over the course of three hot September days, the two couples try to reconnect. Events that have been set in motion, circumstances and feelings kept hidden, rise to the surface, forcing each to ask not just how they ended up where they are, but how they ended up who they are.
Unwinding like a suspense novel, Joanna Hershon's St. Ivo is a powerful investigation into the meaning of choice and family, whether we ever know the people closest to us, and how, when someone goes missing from our lives, we can ever let them go.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hershon's somber, murky fifth novel (after The Dual Inheritance) gradually reveals the unhappy secrets between floundering filmmaker Sarah and her adult daughter, Leda. Sarah, who hasn't made a film for years, has recently, and uncertainly, reunited with her husband, Matthew, after a two-year separation. The novel follows the couple over the course of a weekend spent in upstate New York with their friends and fellow artists Kiki and Arman, who have just had a baby. Hershon slowly drags in clues to the source of Sarah's suffering, and the circumstances surrounding her and Matthew's estrangement from Leda, which Sarah tries to work through in a screenplay despite Matthew's objections. Heading into the weekend, Sarah behaves in increasingly risky ways and gives her name and phone number to a "grandfatherly" Czech man she meets on the subway. Upstate, she tempts danger in a swimsuit-clad encounter with Kiki and Arman's gruff neighbor in the woods, stimulated by the sense that the man could overpower her after he touches the fringe of her suit. While Leda's story of heroin addiction and betrayal is rather predictable, Sarah's opaque emotional backdrop receives welcome bursts of illumination with brief, dialogue-driven cinematic scenes. Hershon explores with moving simplicity the complexities friendships and a marriage that has frayed but not yet died.
