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The Hook
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 6, 2018
In Florence Sunnen's macabre tale, family expectations take on strange new dimensions: the narrator's workaholic parents are disappointed in her for not having a 'project' – even though her brother's project is, well... eating his own body. Set over the course of a summer, The Hook follows the family as the brother reaches the ultimate conclusion of his 'work' and the narrator searches for a goal of her own.
This might have worked better for me with a stronger/more realistic sense of the characters' relationships. Given the surreal and sterile interactions the narrator later has with her parents, it's difficult to imagine her mother engaging in ordinary conversation about whether she (the narrator) remembers a cartoon, as she does in the opening scene; similarly, it's hard to feel the brother's self-destruction is anything more than a peculiar setpiece when there's no evidence he and his sister truly mean anything to one another.
Still, this is a memorable story and a very original one. Its imagery is a major strength, both in terms of the body horror – which, while bizarre, is gruesomely realised – and some more benign details. I have a vivid picture of the flat in which this nameless family live, and I loved a particular line from the narrator's memory of gardening with her uncle, when she recalls how weeds would 'run softly through my hand like the tail of a cat'.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
This might have worked better for me with a stronger/more realistic sense of the characters' relationships. Given the surreal and sterile interactions the narrator later has with her parents, it's difficult to imagine her mother engaging in ordinary conversation about whether she (the narrator) remembers a cartoon, as she does in the opening scene; similarly, it's hard to feel the brother's self-destruction is anything more than a peculiar setpiece when there's no evidence he and his sister truly mean anything to one another.
Still, this is a memorable story and a very original one. Its imagery is a major strength, both in terms of the body horror – which, while bizarre, is gruesomely realised – and some more benign details. I have a vivid picture of the flat in which this nameless family live, and I loved a particular line from the narrator's memory of gardening with her uncle, when she recalls how weeds would 'run softly through my hand like the tail of a cat'.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
May 27, 2018
In The Hook, a brother and sister arrive home for the summer after their life at university has finished. But strange things are afoot in this seemingly normal family unit. The Hook has been likened by one reviewer to Shirley Jackson’s writing. Certainly, Florence Sunnen has a great capacity to telegraph things to come, wrapping the story up in a normality that both reassures and yet gives off a whiff of something slightly out of place (a child unnerved by a cartoon of dancing skeletons, whereas her brother is not. Comforted at last because her restlessness is keeping her mother awake).
You are treated to the mundane routine of family life. The build up is so insidious you nearly drop the book when the shock moment arrives. This is the kind of compelling reading that, despite being well and truly “creeped out” by the events, the meticulous observation of the narrator of the story keeps you locked in to find out what happens next. Each horrific stage of the story is read in disbelief and fascination.
The Hook is a deliciously warped extension of the type of family where the parents perceive their role is to raise their children to achieve and then set each child off against the other to spur them on, just so they can boast around the dinner table of their offspring’s achievements. Choice descriptions really hammer home the way things are in the dynamics of the household between parents and children (“the office hardened around her like a crab shell”).
The dénouement does nothing to give the reader space to find some ease from the sense they have unwittingly entered into a contract with a story that once read will continue to haunt in the quiet hours.
The Hook was courtesy of Nightjar Press.
You are treated to the mundane routine of family life. The build up is so insidious you nearly drop the book when the shock moment arrives. This is the kind of compelling reading that, despite being well and truly “creeped out” by the events, the meticulous observation of the narrator of the story keeps you locked in to find out what happens next. Each horrific stage of the story is read in disbelief and fascination.
The Hook is a deliciously warped extension of the type of family where the parents perceive their role is to raise their children to achieve and then set each child off against the other to spur them on, just so they can boast around the dinner table of their offspring’s achievements. Choice descriptions really hammer home the way things are in the dynamics of the household between parents and children (“the office hardened around her like a crab shell”).
The dénouement does nothing to give the reader space to find some ease from the sense they have unwittingly entered into a contract with a story that once read will continue to haunt in the quiet hours.
The Hook was courtesy of Nightjar Press.
January 14, 2021
“My brother was twenty-four and still managing to hide. Always in the same place, always in the attic. It wasn’t much of a chase.”
It is hard to detach myself from this story and see it objectively. And if I told you what happened in it, you would probably not believe me, but, if you did, this knowledge would spoil your undoubted enjoyment or serious appreciation of it. Suffice to say, it is well written and compelling. Why am I not able to detach myself? Well, in tune with my long experience of gestalt real-time reviewing, I have hit yet another illuminating synchronicity. Just an hour ago I read and reviewed the Nicholas Royle story HIDE AND SEEK, in many ways completely different, but with a brother and sister playing hide and seek. A synergy of a number of co-resonating meanings that neither work had till I read both just now by accident. The two works already brilliant as standalones, I say, but now inadvertently even more brilliant. Here in the Sunnen it is not a hide and seek game exactly, but the results and oblique implications are similar. A Zeno’s Paradox fable. Almost. (And I noted the coloured spines of books in the Sunnen. Not white ones like Picador.)
It is hard to detach myself from this story and see it objectively. And if I told you what happened in it, you would probably not believe me, but, if you did, this knowledge would spoil your undoubted enjoyment or serious appreciation of it. Suffice to say, it is well written and compelling. Why am I not able to detach myself? Well, in tune with my long experience of gestalt real-time reviewing, I have hit yet another illuminating synchronicity. Just an hour ago I read and reviewed the Nicholas Royle story HIDE AND SEEK, in many ways completely different, but with a brother and sister playing hide and seek. A synergy of a number of co-resonating meanings that neither work had till I read both just now by accident. The two works already brilliant as standalones, I say, but now inadvertently even more brilliant. Here in the Sunnen it is not a hide and seek game exactly, but the results and oblique implications are similar. A Zeno’s Paradox fable. Almost. (And I noted the coloured spines of books in the Sunnen. Not white ones like Picador.)
May 20, 2018
Loved it!
October 31, 2019
Strange, unsettling and fearsomely deadpan literary horror. Would highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews