Mr. Splitfoot
Samantha Hunt
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
A New York Times Editors' Choice and Indie Next Pick. From the author of The Invention of Everything Else comes a contemporary gothic about Mr. Splitfoot, who tracks two women across multiple decades as they march, each in her own time, toward a mysterious reckoning. Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth's niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who--or what--has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?
In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural and vice versa.
Product Details
Price
$18.99
$17.66
Publisher
Mariner Books
Publish Date
January 24, 2017
Pages
352
Dimensions
5.2 X 7.8 X 0.9 inches | 0.65 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780544811812
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About the Author
SAMANTHA HUNT's The Invention of Everything Else was a finalist for the Orange Prize and winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. After her first novel, The Seas, she was selected for the National Book Foundation's inaugural 5 Under 35 program. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker and McSweeney's.
Reviews
"Ethereal . . . The book deftly straddles the slippery line between fantasy and reality in a story that's both gripping and wonderfully mystifying . . . [I]nterconnected chapters build suspense while keeping readers guessing about what crazy turn might happen next. Hints of what's in store for readers include a cult of Etherists, a noseless man, a pile of lost money, and a scar-like pattern of meteorite landings. This spellbinder is storytelling at its best."--Publishers Weekly, starred review
"A truly fantastic novel in which the blurring of natural and supernatural creates a stirring, visceral conclusion."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"I get the chills. Is it a true story? Is it a sad story? It's what people want. It has a lot of good energy and people, people will like it. They will keep reading it until they read the end of it. It's intriguing because a person will know there's something two-sided. Yeah. It's a good one."--Charlotte Brontë, speaking through a medium
"Part road trip, part gothic, Mr. Splitfoot belongs on the shelf beside The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Samantha Hunt is astonishing. Her every sentence electrifies. Her characters demand our closest attention. Her new book contains everything that I want in a novel. If I could long-distance mesmerize you, dear reader, into picking up this book and buying it and reading it at once, believe me: I would."--Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble, Magic for Beginners, and many others
"I'm speechless. Mr. Splitfoot is so inventive, so new; I haven't read anything like it in years. On the surface it's about false spirituality and the most demented road trip across New York State ever attempted, but it's also about the horrible ties that bind us and the small acts of redemption that make life almost okay. On top of that, it's a thrilling page-turner. I couldn't stop reading it."--Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure, Super Sad True Love Story, and many others
"Mr. Splitfoot is lyrical, echoing, deeply strange, with a quality of sustained hallucination. It is the best book on communicating with the dead since William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley, but it swaps out that novel's cynicism for a more life-affirming sense of uncertainty."--Luc Sante, author of Low Life and many others
"Mr. Splitfoot is an absolutely thrilling book. Filial and maternal love are on display in all their complicated hugeness. But Hunt gives us plenty of humor amid the horror and awe--
and then turns on the lights and shows us what was looming above us the whole time. I can't stop thinking about it."--Sarah Manguso, author of Ongoingness, Two Kinds of Decay, and others
"A truly fantastic novel in which the blurring of natural and supernatural creates a stirring, visceral conclusion."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"I get the chills. Is it a true story? Is it a sad story? It's what people want. It has a lot of good energy and people, people will like it. They will keep reading it until they read the end of it. It's intriguing because a person will know there's something two-sided. Yeah. It's a good one."--Charlotte Brontë, speaking through a medium
"Part road trip, part gothic, Mr. Splitfoot belongs on the shelf beside The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Samantha Hunt is astonishing. Her every sentence electrifies. Her characters demand our closest attention. Her new book contains everything that I want in a novel. If I could long-distance mesmerize you, dear reader, into picking up this book and buying it and reading it at once, believe me: I would."--Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble, Magic for Beginners, and many others
"I'm speechless. Mr. Splitfoot is so inventive, so new; I haven't read anything like it in years. On the surface it's about false spirituality and the most demented road trip across New York State ever attempted, but it's also about the horrible ties that bind us and the small acts of redemption that make life almost okay. On top of that, it's a thrilling page-turner. I couldn't stop reading it."--Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure, Super Sad True Love Story, and many others
"Mr. Splitfoot is lyrical, echoing, deeply strange, with a quality of sustained hallucination. It is the best book on communicating with the dead since William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley, but it swaps out that novel's cynicism for a more life-affirming sense of uncertainty."--Luc Sante, author of Low Life and many others
"Mr. Splitfoot is an absolutely thrilling book. Filial and maternal love are on display in all their complicated hugeness. But Hunt gives us plenty of humor amid the horror and awe--
and then turns on the lights and shows us what was looming above us the whole time. I can't stop thinking about it."--Sarah Manguso, author of Ongoingness, Two Kinds of Decay, and others
