The Hill: 'One of the most beautiful books I have ever read' Tara Westover
Formats & Editions
'The future of literature is in exceptional, inspired hands'
Michael Cunningham, author of Day
'One of the best new books I've read not only this year but in some time'
New Yorker, Best Books of the Year so Far
'The book everyone will be talking about this winter . . . an important read that'll make you laugh, cry and think'
Stylist
'I don't know how Clark wrote The Hill, but I'm glad she did. I'll be rereading it for the rest of my life'
Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
'Equal parts comedy of coming of age and Sebaldian rumination. Lady Bird meets The Emigrants. I loved it'
Brandon Taylor, author of Minor Black Figures
'I have never read a book that captures the experience of growing up so precisely'
Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger
Suzanna Klein was a baby when her mother got up early one morning to rob a bank with a group of fellow radicals. Now, Suzanna spends every Saturday visiting Hillcrest Prison, a place her mother will never leave.
At home, Suzanna is raised by her grandmother, who is unforgiving of her daughter's crime and refuses to visit the prison. Surrounding Suzanna are her grandmother's friends, who know one another from their years in the Communist Party. These women once insisted on changing the world, but are now torn between teaching Suzanna how the world works and shielding her from it.
Suzanna vows to return to the prison forever, but her mother wants her to be free. Told with irreverent wisdom and visionary force, The Hill is an incandescent novel of a child growing up between worlds, and of a family broken apart by the desire for change.
Praise for The Hill
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The Hill is tragic, comic, gorgeously written, and overflowing with life; everything you hope a novel will be when you read its opening line. It's a rare experience when a novel not only fulfills those hopes, but transcends them. The fact that this is Harriet Clark's first novel is not only astonishing, it speaks to the greatest hope of all - that the future of American literature is in exceptional, inspired hands
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A debut reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping
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A masterful meditation on discipline, mothering, revolutionary idealism, and forgiveness, The Hill is also a wry and intensely gripping story of a tender-souled girl making sense of the punishing world she's inherited. The writing is so clear, lovely, and lonely - so gently philosophical - that when I got to the final line, I went back and began again, just to stay inside
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Harriet Clark's The Hill orbits the endurance that attends faith and the daily, hourly, micro resiliencies which compose and conduct grace. Suzanna's visionary constancy - despite a phalanx of actors, human and institutional, conspiring against it - felt to me as morally urgent as anything in Dostoevsky. How is it possible for a book with such manifest stakes to also be this funny? This propulsive? I don't know how Clark wrote The Hill, but I'm glad she did. I'll be re-reading it for the rest of my life
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The story of two extraordinary minds, growing up in prison together. The Hill took two decades to write, and I really did have the sense that the insights of each of those years had culminated in a vantage point that feels totally new. I can't stop thinking about it and demanding that everyone read it
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The Hill is a tenderly Kafkaesque novel about the cruelties and absurdities of incarceration. A book of tremendous depth and feeling that manages to be equal parts comedy of coming of age and Sebaldian rumination. Lady Bird meets The Emigrants. I loved it
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One of the most beautiful books I have ever read
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A profound, funny, and utterly original excavation of a young girl's consciousness
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