10 Mar / The Stars Are Not Yet Bells by Hannah Lillith Assadi [in Booklist]
Veteran narrator Hillary Huber (soon to hit 700 credits) seems exactly in her element in embodying Hannah Lillith Assadi’s (Sonora, 2017) elegiac second novel of devolving connections, recalled through the scattering memories of an aging woman facing dementia.
Once upon a time, Elle was madly in love with untethered drifter Gabriel. In an act of protective parental love borne of financial desperation, her father promised her to Manhattan heir Simon. The new couple relocates to Lyra Island off Georgia’s coast, where Simon spends a half-century seeking the source of the offshore “shimmering blue.” Gabriel reappears for a time, introduced as Elle’s cousin, but like so much in Elle’s life, nothing retains permanency. As her future dims, bits and pieces of her past erratically sparkle for readers to parse just enough of Elle’s history.
Huber, who excels in voicing the intimate, inner lives of women struggling and searching (Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through?, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series), deftly engages her enviable range especially for Elle, from innocently lovesick to detachedly unsure of possibly everything, and the endless decades in between.
Review: “Media,” Booklist, March 1, 2022
Readers: Adult
Published: 2022