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Unwritten Book
“One of our most interesting and bold writers . . . [offers] a characteristically wild effort that defies genre distinctions, flits from the profound to the mundane with fierce intelligence and searching restlessness, and at its best, delves deep into the recesses of the human heart with courageous abandon . . . An intoxicating blend of humor and pathos.” ―Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe
“Eerie, profound, and daring, this is a book only the inimitable Hunt could write.”
―Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
From Samantha Hunt, the award-winning author of The Dark Dark, comes The Unwritten Book , her first work of nonfiction, a genre-bending creation that explores the importance of books, the idea of haunting, and messages from beyond
I carry each book I’ve ever read with me, just as I carry my dead―those things that aren’t really there, those things that shape everything I am.
A genre-bending work of nonfiction, Samantha Hunt’s The Unwritten Book explores ghosts, ghost stories, and haunting, in the broadest sense of each. What is it to be haunted, to be a ghost, to die, to live, to read? Books are ghosts; reading is communion with the dead. Alcohol is a way of communing, too, as well as a way of dying.
Each chapter gathers subjects that dead people, the forest, the towering library of all those books we’ll never have time to read or write. Hunt, like a mad crossword puzzler, looks for patterns and clues. Through literary criticism, history, family history, and memoir, inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and many others, Hunt explores motherhood, hoarding, legacies of addiction, grief, how we insulate ourselves from the past, how we misinterpret the world. Nestled within her inquiry is a very special ghost book, an incomplete manuscript about people who can fly without wings, written by her father and found in his desk just days after he died. What secret messages might his work reveal? What wisdom might she distill from its unfinished pages?
Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love.
“Eerie, profound, and daring, this is a book only the inimitable Hunt could write.”
―Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
From Samantha Hunt, the award-winning author of The Dark Dark, comes The Unwritten Book , her first work of nonfiction, a genre-bending creation that explores the importance of books, the idea of haunting, and messages from beyond
I carry each book I’ve ever read with me, just as I carry my dead―those things that aren’t really there, those things that shape everything I am.
A genre-bending work of nonfiction, Samantha Hunt’s The Unwritten Book explores ghosts, ghost stories, and haunting, in the broadest sense of each. What is it to be haunted, to be a ghost, to die, to live, to read? Books are ghosts; reading is communion with the dead. Alcohol is a way of communing, too, as well as a way of dying.
Each chapter gathers subjects that dead people, the forest, the towering library of all those books we’ll never have time to read or write. Hunt, like a mad crossword puzzler, looks for patterns and clues. Through literary criticism, history, family history, and memoir, inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and many others, Hunt explores motherhood, hoarding, legacies of addiction, grief, how we insulate ourselves from the past, how we misinterpret the world. Nestled within her inquiry is a very special ghost book, an incomplete manuscript about people who can fly without wings, written by her father and found in his desk just days after he died. What secret messages might his work reveal? What wisdom might she distill from its unfinished pages?
Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love.
384 pages, Paperback
First published April 5, 2022
104 people are currently reading
5683 people want to read
About the author
Samantha Hunt
21 books829 followersSamantha Hunt was born in 1971 in Pound Ridge, New York, the youngest of six siblings. She was raised in a house built in 1765 which wasn't haunted in the traditional sense but was so overstuffed with books— good and bad ones— that it had the effect of haunting Hunt all the same. Her mother is a painter and her father was an editor. In 1989 Hunt moved to Vermont where she studied literature, printmaking, and geology. She got her MFA from Warren Wilson College and then, in 1999, moved to New York City. While working on her writing, she held a number of odd jobs including a stint in an envelope factory.
Samantha Hunt received a National Book Foundation award for authors under 35, for her novel, The Seas. The Invention of Everything Else was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She won the Bard Fiction Prize for 2010.
Samantha Hunt received a National Book Foundation award for authors under 35, for her novel, The Seas. The Invention of Everything Else was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She won the Bard Fiction Prize for 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
January 23, 2022
This book is not fiction. It is an experiment written over many years, and while someone might read it in a day, in a week, it was years in the making. Patterns occurred, themes returned, as with anything that one observes over a long enough period. Surely this is part of the reason death hurts us. We want to stay and look longer, to conduct our experiments, to see the patterns repeat and confirm what we might have suspected all along: In the distance, this makes sense and even more than sense, in the distance this makes beauty.
The Unwritten Book is kind of a memoir, with author Samantha Hunt describing her life and her family and looking for hidden patterns in the influences that shaped her. This is highly literary — with Hunt often quoting from a broad range of novelists — but the author also draws heavily from art and film and music (even a relatably engaging essay on One Direction), getting to the essence of what makes us all unwritten works. This does have the feeling of an experimental project — which may not have universal appeal — but I found Hunt to be thoughtful and likeable and it did work for me. Rounded up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I carry each book I've ever read with me, just as I carry my dead — those things that aren't really there, those things that shape everything I am.
After Hunt’s father (an editor at Reader’s Digest and an aspiring novelist) died, she found an unfinished manuscript on his computer, and she shares the existing few chapters throughout this book — including countless footnotes that explain where he sourced names for people or places, what real life events would have prompted him to include certain details. The manuscript itself is interesting and well-written, but I guess it’s most valuable as a way for Hunt to demonstrate the countless influences that any artist brings to their craft. Hunt writes:
Nick Cave, the artist, created his first Soundsuit in 1992 after Rodney King was beaten by members of the Los Angeles Police Department. Cave’s suits are assemblages of twigs, toys, sweaters, buttons, beads, pot holders, globes, stuffed animals, afghans, cookie tins, ceramic birds, sock monkeys, baskets. Cave’s care-full constructions translate these objects into something more meaning-full than their original purpose. More meaning-full because the bits that make up his Soundsuits are now in relation with other objects.
And it’s the patterns and relation of bits that Hunt seems most intrigued by. She notes that W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn “references so many books, people, and histories I’ve never heard of before that the question of what is fiction or nonfiction, though always present, becomes in some way unimportant”; the first time she saw Patti Smith in concert, "I recognized in her elements of Borges’s definition of the aleph: that which contains everything in the universe seen from every point of view simultaneously" ; she references (among many others) the collage qualities of the Hauntings installation by filmmaker Guy Maddin, The Kept Private, a multisourced historical play written by Jeremy Davidson, and the Song Dong piece Waste Not, “which makes order from his mother’s collections''. We learn that Hunt’s own mother is an artist (whose collections might be in need of order), and although her father had become sober before his death, his years of alcoholism sound messy and disordered. Hunt describes her current life as a writer and a teacher, a wife and a mother to three young girls, and we can see how the influences she describes rattle around inside her, waiting to be written.
What book do you use as oracle? What book don’t you use that way? What book is not a work of reference, pointing in the direction of every book our author has read, job her parents have worked, meal she’s eaten, film she’s seen, road she’s walked, rock she’s kicked, microbe she’s never even imagined?
Filled with interesting references and thoughtful consideration of them, this is much more than a personal memoir (although it is that, as well). I particularly liked Hunt's father’s manuscript and her dissection of it, and while this whole might be too experimental for wide appeal, I did enjoy it and hope it finds its niche.
September 19, 2022
A fascinating hybrid book, including essayistic/memoristic portions a la Sebold, wide ranging thoughts on the author's relationship to the dead, to the cycle of growth and decay (she prefers decay), the life of girls and the spell of One Direction--and the question of why it is that everything girls like is trivialized. Most of all, it is a contemplation of her family: her parents, an artistic mother who lives in the old family house completely packed with collections, mementos and frankly, junk, and her beloved father who died early, an gentle alcoholic journalist who worked for Reader's Digest. The essays are counterpointed by pages the author claims to have found in her father's desk drawer, three chapters of an unfinished novel, pages which are punctuated by footnotes--or rather, prenotes--as they appear on the book's left hand pages. These notes are not always explications, they also include bits of other stories and the author's opinions on a variety of subjects, for a wonderfully hypertextualized effect.
As I became a college student at a time when it was considered cheating to read secondary material glossing a text under consideration, I had to struggle on my own to decide whether the father's novel was made up or was in fact a text Hunt uncovered as she said she had. Because of its almost parodic spy-thriller tone--no spoilers--but I was sure it was fiction.
I'm a big fan of Samantha Hunt's earlier short story collection The Dark Dark, and was looking forward to the challenge of this new book, its mysteries and puzzles and fascinating style. What I like best about it is a particular trait in her writing, a poetic technique, where she'll be discussing a topic in one paragraph, and then instead of making a smooth transition, will take a giant leap--opening with a non-sequitur. Then, just as the reader is going 'Whaaat??", backs up into the meaning. its a wonderfully refreshing technique that keeps us off-balance, mimicking the crazy leaps that ordinary thought takes. First we are reminded of something, and then we see why it matters.
Her range of literary referents reminds me of the work of David Markson, another writer who lives among the thoughts of other writers. There's a list (a "forest") of works touched upon, if one wished to follow her down this particular rabbit hole.
I specifically appreciated her treatment of the pandemic, when she wrote most of the book--the strange stillness of that period we haven't even begun to unravel. I loved the section about the boy band One Direction (another blank place on my map of the world) and her argument that the things girls like should not be trivialized, but seen as an inroad into understanding life in a woman's skin.
Things dissolve into dust and recombine--"Like wine, the notes get complicated and delicious. In Morrison, I taste hints of Faulkner. In Faulkner, I taste the King James. In the King James, the fabulist works of Aesop, a storyteller who dissolved into a fiction. One version of Aesop's history says he was a slave who told stories to win his freedom. Who was Aesop's mother? What stories did she tell him? In each book we discover flavors we don't recognize, bits from books so hidden and lost to us, they are now soil. In reading, I taste the dirt."
"Thoughts take leaps. Chemistry to. minerals to vitamin to living to dying to reading to paper to trees to nature, biology to chemistry. Or maybe less logical,. Maybe chemistry leads to thoughts of nail polish, yeasted breads, high school, or quilts. Either way, collected ideas bounce off one another like some percussive instrument and the sound of one thought striking another thought is a beautiful sound."
As I became a college student at a time when it was considered cheating to read secondary material glossing a text under consideration, I had to struggle on my own to decide whether the father's novel was made up or was in fact a text Hunt uncovered as she said she had. Because of its almost parodic spy-thriller tone--no spoilers--but I was sure it was fiction.
I'm a big fan of Samantha Hunt's earlier short story collection The Dark Dark, and was looking forward to the challenge of this new book, its mysteries and puzzles and fascinating style. What I like best about it is a particular trait in her writing, a poetic technique, where she'll be discussing a topic in one paragraph, and then instead of making a smooth transition, will take a giant leap--opening with a non-sequitur. Then, just as the reader is going 'Whaaat??", backs up into the meaning. its a wonderfully refreshing technique that keeps us off-balance, mimicking the crazy leaps that ordinary thought takes. First we are reminded of something, and then we see why it matters.
Her range of literary referents reminds me of the work of David Markson, another writer who lives among the thoughts of other writers. There's a list (a "forest") of works touched upon, if one wished to follow her down this particular rabbit hole.
I specifically appreciated her treatment of the pandemic, when she wrote most of the book--the strange stillness of that period we haven't even begun to unravel. I loved the section about the boy band One Direction (another blank place on my map of the world) and her argument that the things girls like should not be trivialized, but seen as an inroad into understanding life in a woman's skin.
Things dissolve into dust and recombine--"Like wine, the notes get complicated and delicious. In Morrison, I taste hints of Faulkner. In Faulkner, I taste the King James. In the King James, the fabulist works of Aesop, a storyteller who dissolved into a fiction. One version of Aesop's history says he was a slave who told stories to win his freedom. Who was Aesop's mother? What stories did she tell him? In each book we discover flavors we don't recognize, bits from books so hidden and lost to us, they are now soil. In reading, I taste the dirt."
"Thoughts take leaps. Chemistry to. minerals to vitamin to living to dying to reading to paper to trees to nature, biology to chemistry. Or maybe less logical,. Maybe chemistry leads to thoughts of nail polish, yeasted breads, high school, or quilts. Either way, collected ideas bounce off one another like some percussive instrument and the sound of one thought striking another thought is a beautiful sound."
January 15, 2022
With a heavy heart and a recently missing cat (wringing out the old year, hearing the ringing of the new through my poorly insulated walls), I started a book that followed me home from work. For years, Samantha Hunt novels, on glancing and flipping, have always looked to be in the “Alley (up my)” or “Wheelhouse (in my)” genres, but this is my first and, by golly, I can’t stop rambling, deleting, rambling, deleting this review. She lets grief, family, empathy, childhood, alcohol, a boy band, authority, loss, parenthood, faith (and much much more) drop, all at once, into the top of the Plinko board, amazingly not jamming the derned thing up. What settles at the bottom is a nice, orderly, call for all to relish the unknown, hold tight to loss, and madlib the half-assed answers to life’s half-asked questions. I, for one, am retooling “rut” and giving a new shine to “stuck in a.” However, as newly-formed fanboy insecurities blossom, the Samantha Hunt in my mind says “well, YOU sure missed the point on the head.” But surely the fact that I got what I wanted out of [the book, which I forgot to mention is a work of nonfiction] was surely the point of it exactly. Or at least that’s what I got out of it. Surely.
January 28, 2022
“The permeability of our bodies is at the heart of desire. We are so full of holes. The biggest holes are the ones left by death. Do we love one another because we know that one day we will be dead? We are well-versed in la petit mort, the French euphemism for orgasm, but we fail to consider all the other small expirations, tiny deaths we suffer: trimming our nails, scratching dry skin, crying, spitting, peeing, farting, bleeding, birthing. And what of the more complex unravelings of our minds, those thoughts that spin away from us? Sometimes I can’t stop talking, letting my insides out. Sometimes the reason I write is in order to get the language out of my body. We are always dying a little bit and these little deaths humiliate us, return us to the humus. We lose small parts of ourselves — teeth, minds, dust, gas, salt. Perhaps we are wrong to think those parts belonged to us in the first place — the façade of identity — when they are only borrowed from the earth. I think we are even more wrong to suffer humiliation as if our bodies’ functions are a failure of virtue. Our small deaths — balding, depression, sneezing — prepare us for the big one, la grand mort. If we were less humiliated by our bodies and greeted the small deaths without shame, we could come to the big death easier, with less fear.”
A perfect book — uncategorizable, daring, strange, profound, moving, illuminating. Everything.
A perfect book — uncategorizable, daring, strange, profound, moving, illuminating. Everything.
June 24, 2024
Such an interesting book!!! Samantha Hunt you will always be famous I love your books!!!!! ❤️
Here is a list of things that stuck with me and/or are relatable and/or a memory or sense of feeling triggered by her writing and/or random notes:
My dad is a cardinal too. So is my mom. She is also a butterfly and they are also both nothing.
I’m reminded of being a child at a birthday party and it’s pirate themed and feeling the ecstasy of a literal treasure hunt.
Counterpanes is such an interesting word.
The desire to return to childhood.
The tragedy of a parent not living to see their child’s success, the bloom of the flower from the seed.
I similarly found a chunk of my dad’s writing after he died, but my dad did not work in the realm of books at all so it was a surprise, especially because I didn’t find anything other than this one-page prose poem that was so clear and moving. I remember he was always reading articles online and buying books but only getting part of the way through them. I wonder why I couldn’t find any other writing. I wonder what else he would write about. This one piece was so good that I felt like his whole life could’ve been different if he had leaned into it. I wonder how his life could’ve been different if his circumstances were different.
I think maybe I’m so drawn to all of Samantha Hunt’s work because grief is intertwined throughout so well. It informs our every day so of course it permeates through writing.
How good it feels to be in on the joke! To understand the reference!
Ghost books as in books not fully written or at all and also books about ghosts and also her dad’s books. The unwritten book :)
To be a child of an alcoholic means being hyper-tuned into sounds as signs of a drink being drunk. I could recognize the clunk of the specific glass against the counter from across the house, hear the tinkling of the micro-thin orange-handled paintbrush used to stir the drink. “The children of alcoholics really are detectives”
I love the contrast of One Direction and finding a mass on her ovary. The insatiability of fandom and to enter a new puberty.
I am so glad she did not delete Mr. Splitfoot!!
Thinking about how my dad would get me “started on the yard work” too, starting the lawn mower and taking a few swipes of grass and then leaving me to the rest.
We believe the lies our parents tell us. Like how I believed my mom actually knew a guy who ate so many carrots he could see through his eyelids.
Wow I wish my parents or grandparents had kept detailed diaries.
lol Garrett and I were talking about Miranda July JUST before I read the part where Samantha Hunt talks about her. Love a coincidence 😏
Ily Samantha Hunt but you should be embarrassed to hang an American flag under a Biden & Harris administration too. Or ever!
Here is a list of things that stuck with me and/or are relatable and/or a memory or sense of feeling triggered by her writing and/or random notes:
My dad is a cardinal too. So is my mom. She is also a butterfly and they are also both nothing.
I’m reminded of being a child at a birthday party and it’s pirate themed and feeling the ecstasy of a literal treasure hunt.
Counterpanes is such an interesting word.
The desire to return to childhood.
The tragedy of a parent not living to see their child’s success, the bloom of the flower from the seed.
I similarly found a chunk of my dad’s writing after he died, but my dad did not work in the realm of books at all so it was a surprise, especially because I didn’t find anything other than this one-page prose poem that was so clear and moving. I remember he was always reading articles online and buying books but only getting part of the way through them. I wonder why I couldn’t find any other writing. I wonder what else he would write about. This one piece was so good that I felt like his whole life could’ve been different if he had leaned into it. I wonder how his life could’ve been different if his circumstances were different.
I think maybe I’m so drawn to all of Samantha Hunt’s work because grief is intertwined throughout so well. It informs our every day so of course it permeates through writing.
How good it feels to be in on the joke! To understand the reference!
Ghost books as in books not fully written or at all and also books about ghosts and also her dad’s books. The unwritten book :)
To be a child of an alcoholic means being hyper-tuned into sounds as signs of a drink being drunk. I could recognize the clunk of the specific glass against the counter from across the house, hear the tinkling of the micro-thin orange-handled paintbrush used to stir the drink. “The children of alcoholics really are detectives”
I love the contrast of One Direction and finding a mass on her ovary. The insatiability of fandom and to enter a new puberty.
I am so glad she did not delete Mr. Splitfoot!!
Thinking about how my dad would get me “started on the yard work” too, starting the lawn mower and taking a few swipes of grass and then leaving me to the rest.
We believe the lies our parents tell us. Like how I believed my mom actually knew a guy who ate so many carrots he could see through his eyelids.
Wow I wish my parents or grandparents had kept detailed diaries.
lol Garrett and I were talking about Miranda July JUST before I read the part where Samantha Hunt talks about her. Love a coincidence 😏
Ily Samantha Hunt but you should be embarrassed to hang an American flag under a Biden & Harris administration too. Or ever!
June 18, 2022
It's fair to say I could reread only this book for the remainder of my life and not only never get bored with it, but I could take some new, thought-provoking insight from it each time.
I've never read anything quite like this: The author found an unfinished novel among her late father's effects, which she studied for clues to his thoughts and experiences. That partial manuscript is published here, along with Ms. Hunt's marginalia and annotations; the novel's unedited chapters are interspersed with her gorgeous essays and meditations on death and on life.
On only a meager handful of occasions across the span of a lifetime do you come across a piece of work that is so singularly original, the idiosyncratic product of but one writer's psyche, that it makes you feel like you've been given a glimpse at some secret, sacred text. The Unwritten Book is a revelation. It took courage to write it and, in today's culture of corporate entertainment, to publish it. Make the time to read it.
I've never read anything quite like this: The author found an unfinished novel among her late father's effects, which she studied for clues to his thoughts and experiences. That partial manuscript is published here, along with Ms. Hunt's marginalia and annotations; the novel's unedited chapters are interspersed with her gorgeous essays and meditations on death and on life.
On only a meager handful of occasions across the span of a lifetime do you come across a piece of work that is so singularly original, the idiosyncratic product of but one writer's psyche, that it makes you feel like you've been given a glimpse at some secret, sacred text. The Unwritten Book is a revelation. It took courage to write it and, in today's culture of corporate entertainment, to publish it. Make the time to read it.
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June 4, 2023this was kind of a mixed bag for me. i really loved the first few essay — the one about one direction is my absolute favorite — but i did feel like the inclusion of excerpts of samantha’s dad’s book weighed down the book a lot. samantha’s essays themselves were really fascinating — although some of them could have used some editing — and she has some really fascinating thoughts surrounding death, decay, our own mortality, books.
May 20, 2022
from this book....
I carry each book I’ve ever read with me, just as I carry my dead―those things that aren’t really there, those things that shape everything I am.
from the Harvard Book Review...
Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love.
I concur on all points. thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think you will as well.
I carry each book I’ve ever read with me, just as I carry my dead―those things that aren’t really there, those things that shape everything I am.
from the Harvard Book Review...
Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love.
I concur on all points. thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think you will as well.
December 31, 2022
Books find us when we need them most and The Unwritten Book found me, for sure. I saved it for my last book of the year on purpose and I'm so glad I did. It's genre-bending exploration of everything from grief to birds is one I'll need to read again and again.
January 11, 2025
4.5 stars
Many thoughts. Mind is stirring. All nonfiction writers should read it.
Many thoughts. Mind is stirring. All nonfiction writers should read it.
July 20, 2023
I'm honestly torn between 3 and 4 stars. There were parts of this book that were absolutely beautiful and poignant, but there were other parts that felt a bit tedious. I found Hunt's musings far more interesting than her father's actual work, but even some of her tangents felt a bit too... tangential for me. I suppose that's just the nature of this kind of work. But I loved the concept and the general direction of Hunt's probing and thoughts. Certainly made me want to hug my dad and all my loved ones close. In the end, I'm giving four stars because this book was so heartfelt and lovely it feels unfair to give it less, even if my actual experience of it was more like three stars.
February 23, 2022
Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. The author is a novelist who is obsessed, inspired and shaped by the great books she’s read. After her father’s death, she finds several chapters of a book that he had started. Through this unfinished novel the author can expand on his life as the author sprinkles in numerous footnotes about her father, herself and her family. It’s a thrilling experiment of a book that moves in so many unexpected and thoughtful ways.
June 21, 2022
A gorgeously thoughtful, unique, insightful, and optimistic exploration of grief and all of the things, both material and immaterial, that comprise it. Highly recommended to lovers of literature and the human condition.
October 30, 2023
Something that wasn't meant to be anything significant turned into the voice of a friend, whose deep, vulnerable, and honest inner dialogue you keep returning to day after day, page after page, and keep longing for even after it has fallen silent.
June 4, 2022
This book... wow. An exceptional reading experience. During the days I spent with this book, I thought about it constantly, even when I wasn't actively reading it. I love Samantha Hunt's brain. In this book she offers incredibly thoughtful and insightful reflections on books and life and death and the passage of time and family and the past in the present and the connectivity of it all. I absolutely love her writing and reread many of these essays multiple times. I learned a lot and have a whole bunch of new books to add to my TBR list. Bonus points for the delightful if unexpected essay centered on One Direction.
January 27, 2025
By most measures this book shouldn’t work, and yet I quickly found myself drawn into its near-desperate investigations. The author finds chapters from her father‘s Unwritten Book after his death and so she begins outlining life, death, and all the threads in between. The fixation with finding clues and meaning in the margins will likely put off a lot of readers but it felt familiar to me, as someone who’s been there. There is something that ignites in your brain with loss, trying to make sense of the unfathomable absence. Although at times manic, I feel like Hunt captures that fractured infatuation well in this text.
July 24, 2022
Hard to write a review for a well-written book that I just might have read at the wrong place and time. There are a lot of abstract themes in this book, and I think I would benefit from reading a physical copy as opposed to listening to the audiobook. Add this to the fact that I listened as a passenger on a long road trip while intermittently nodding off in a Benadryl-laced slumber, and you might come to the conclusion that I am completely unqualified to review this work. With all that in mind, I do feel comfortable saying that on a basic level, this audiobook did not hold my attention and I suggest reading it in print or ebook form if you have the option.
September 8, 2023
I read THE SEAS by Samantha Hunt and really enjoyed it… this was a wild ride.
I had no idea what to expect going into it and it felt like tumbling down the rabbit hole. Started off strange and got stranger before I realized what was going on, a 1/3 of the way through the book.
It’s a memoir / found book / memories & a cross-examination on themes around family, death and grief.
I had no idea what to expect going into it and it felt like tumbling down the rabbit hole. Started off strange and got stranger before I realized what was going on, a 1/3 of the way through the book.
It’s a memoir / found book / memories & a cross-examination on themes around family, death and grief.
June 15, 2022
Golly, what a book. It is only about 380 pages long (11 hours in the audiobook), but it contains multitudes. I felt right at home in the author’s meditations on libraries, mortality, popular culture, parenting, and ghosts, and by the end I was in tears.
August 7, 2022
“These holes are the truth of the story. We are mortal. We are porous.”
March 19, 2023
I love this book a lot.
Recommended to: Alex, Sal.
Recommended to: Alex, Sal.
May 13, 2023
3.5 stars. Audiobook read by the author.
February 20, 2024
got this book personally signed by samantha hunt (my professor whom i adore) which reads: for kait (+ the dead boys) xoxo
<3 thank u samantha for the book that i really needed to read right now
<3 thank u samantha for the book that i really needed to read right now
February 7, 2022
The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt is an unusual (in the very best sense of the word) book. Memoir, annotated manuscript, musings and mental wanderings, and every bit of it engaging.
This is one of those books I would normally have made a point of reading more slowly. I happened to be in a situation where I couldn't so it was a quick read. It is wonderful as a quick read but there is no way to go off on my own tangents when I read it in a day. It provided a lot to think about and touched on every emotion. So I waited a couple of days and a couple of other books then went back and worked it into my normal reading approach, which is as one of several books that which allows me to go through it slowly. Turns out going through it once fairly quickly then coming back to it worked very well. I knew which parts I wanted to dwell in (possibility) and which ones I wanted to set the book aside for a while and just think about what the words meant to me.
While there are a lot of references to literary works and popular culture the book itself is down to earth. Most of the works will be familiar to some degree and when they aren't Hunt makes her use of them clear enough that the reader's familiarity, or lack of, won't negatively impact the flow. And flow is very much the right word. This is a book that will reward the reader who lets it take them on a journey. Don't overthink where you're going, just think about where you are at any moment in the book. Thus, go with the flow.
Ideal for readers who gain as much from questions asked as statements made. My guess is that much of what I got from the book will be different from what you will get, and that is very much a positive.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
This is one of those books I would normally have made a point of reading more slowly. I happened to be in a situation where I couldn't so it was a quick read. It is wonderful as a quick read but there is no way to go off on my own tangents when I read it in a day. It provided a lot to think about and touched on every emotion. So I waited a couple of days and a couple of other books then went back and worked it into my normal reading approach, which is as one of several books that which allows me to go through it slowly. Turns out going through it once fairly quickly then coming back to it worked very well. I knew which parts I wanted to dwell in (possibility) and which ones I wanted to set the book aside for a while and just think about what the words meant to me.
While there are a lot of references to literary works and popular culture the book itself is down to earth. Most of the works will be familiar to some degree and when they aren't Hunt makes her use of them clear enough that the reader's familiarity, or lack of, won't negatively impact the flow. And flow is very much the right word. This is a book that will reward the reader who lets it take them on a journey. Don't overthink where you're going, just think about where you are at any moment in the book. Thus, go with the flow.
Ideal for readers who gain as much from questions asked as statements made. My guess is that much of what I got from the book will be different from what you will get, and that is very much a positive.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
November 29, 2023
Minority opinion here, I genuinely just did not enjoy this book.
I HATED “The Seas” (another book by this author and a widely acclaimed one at that), but felt like, well maybe that’s on me for just not “getting” her message or something? Any time a book gets a ton of praise I assume I will at least appreciate it, not be totally displeased by it. That book was a rare exception.
But then, I didn’t like this one, either.
Alas, I may need to accept that this author and I just don’t jive.
The first essay in this novel hooked me. It was smart and weird and so intentionally written. So much struck me as profound and relatable.
But as she begins to insert portions of her deceased father’s unpublished novel along with her own commentary I just couldn’t continue with it.
I’m sure it was a very meaningful personal endeavor on her part, but it bored me to deathhhh.
And then, ok, hear me out, but her tone.
Her writing is really smart and can be lovely but there is this tone to it that I can only describe as
‘Talented English Major Who Writes About Feelings As If Vulnerable But In Being Tangential Or Flourish-y Actually Sounds Pretentious’
And don’t hate, we all know (at least) one of those 😂
#notallenglishmajors
Anyhoo, I can’t say this is a bad book, especially since my kindred book spirits appear to appreciate something about it that just seems to skips on by me. Give it a shot and let me know what it is I’m missing.
I HATED “The Seas” (another book by this author and a widely acclaimed one at that), but felt like, well maybe that’s on me for just not “getting” her message or something? Any time a book gets a ton of praise I assume I will at least appreciate it, not be totally displeased by it. That book was a rare exception.
But then, I didn’t like this one, either.
Alas, I may need to accept that this author and I just don’t jive.
The first essay in this novel hooked me. It was smart and weird and so intentionally written. So much struck me as profound and relatable.
But as she begins to insert portions of her deceased father’s unpublished novel along with her own commentary I just couldn’t continue with it.
I’m sure it was a very meaningful personal endeavor on her part, but it bored me to deathhhh.
And then, ok, hear me out, but her tone.
Her writing is really smart and can be lovely but there is this tone to it that I can only describe as
‘Talented English Major Who Writes About Feelings As If Vulnerable But In Being Tangential Or Flourish-y Actually Sounds Pretentious’
And don’t hate, we all know (at least) one of those 😂
#notallenglishmajors
Anyhoo, I can’t say this is a bad book, especially since my kindred book spirits appear to appreciate something about it that just seems to skips on by me. Give it a shot and let me know what it is I’m missing.
October 3, 2024
Finishing this book felt like a loss…
“I’ve birthed three deaths”
This is my second time reading this book. So much has happened in between my time reading it little over a year ago. I have read, seen, heard, been so much. I started using this book as a journal after the first chapter. I started to dissect it and bend the pages. I grew to understand myself. I’m glad I didn’t remember everything. There is something so wonderful about realizing that even the things we knew can be known again. Understood again. I marked this book in the hopes that one day someone I know will pick it up. And just as I see parts of them they may see parts of me.
“I’ve birthed three deaths”
This is my second time reading this book. So much has happened in between my time reading it little over a year ago. I have read, seen, heard, been so much. I started using this book as a journal after the first chapter. I started to dissect it and bend the pages. I grew to understand myself. I’m glad I didn’t remember everything. There is something so wonderful about realizing that even the things we knew can be known again. Understood again. I marked this book in the hopes that one day someone I know will pick it up. And just as I see parts of them they may see parts of me.
March 24, 2022
Samantha Hunt writes books just for me.
December 20, 2022
Unbelievably confusing
September 15, 2022
Do you interact with the world principally through misunderstanding? Do you wonder sometimes if you’re already dead, if perhaps you’ve been dead your whole life? Do you long for access to every book ever written, as well as those that never got that chance, a library of existent and nonexistent books “without border or end”? Does the desire for books share a “fevered passion with our decomposition” in that “we will never be able to read all the books or love all the bodies”? How far does revelation lurk from delusion, and is the view of a mountain fiction or non? To “stop the film before we hit the rocks below, while it looks like we are only flying,” check out The Unwritten Book, a genre-bending brain odyssey by prodigious novelist, essayist, short-story writer and disciple of the ephemeral Samantha Hunt. Take a wormhole past the “finality of knowledge” into the “infinity of what we do not know,” participate in the often illuminating collisions between “dumbness and discovery,” and suspend yourself forever or for a moment, or for both, in the “pages of a book that will always be unfurling, unscrolling, unread, undead.”
***
What if I’ve been dead for a long time? What if I’ve been dead my whole life?
My arms feel stronger with the memory of the rocks that make me.
“It’s hard to make yourself die forever.” —TM
If you have a problem with the word “god,” replace it with the word “love.”
After the word “god” became the word “love,” rocks became books, and books rocks. It makes sense to me. The longer I live with books and words, the more I enjoy their erosion.
Loving libraries, tabernacles of impermanence, is like deliriously trying to preserve the most delicate and ephemeral things: the dead katydid on my windowsill, or people, or snowflake crystals, or love.
In death, might we have access to the books that never had a chance to get written?
In this afterlife library we’ll dissolve back into the many, the microscopic. I’ll browse. I’ll read. I’ll lose concepts of period and length. I’ll lose bits of myself in books, in soil. Alphabet as molecule. Page as ecosystem. Here’s the Natural Science section. Here’s poetry. Here’s the Universe. Skin cells will become dust; flesh, food; bone to stone. Along with every book we never had the chance to read in life we might find the ghost books too, texts that were never written or never finished, phantom books with invisible and unverifiable Dewey Decimal numbers.
While there is a finality to knowledge, there is an infinity to what we don’t know.
The desire for bodies is rooted in our mortality. The desire for books shares a similar fevered passion with our decomposition. We will never be able to read all the books or love all the bodies. We feel the comfort of our smallness, our minerals, our parts.
Sight contains so much imagination, one wonders if the view of a mountain is fiction or nonfiction.
Imagine the library shaken like a snow globe, discrete ideas fall gently on a reader within a contained space.
Delusion can be close to revelation. Birding delights me. Believing delights me. It’s a game. It’s artifice. It’s art. Barry Holstun Lopez writes of the great blue heron, “If you will not speak I will have to consider making you up.”
Desire as lack, rather than love, a hole unfilled.
Do people come and go from our lives so that we might begin to understand what the hole contains? Holes in our bodies, in the earth, in our understanding?
I enjoy the company of the dead. They are so quiet. They know things I don’t know. The dead leave clues, and life is a puzzle of trying to read and understand these mysterious hints before the game is over.
The past is hard to keep standing up. The past is also hard to take down.
Stop the film before we hit the rocks below. Stop here, while it looks like we are only flying.
The list of books that don’t exist is without border or end.
Live forever in the pages of a book that will always be unfurling, unscrolling, unread, undead.
Mishearing is how I love the world.
What further heaven could people want than to become part of a tree?
What will happen when dumbness and discovery never have the chance to meet?
***
What if I’ve been dead for a long time? What if I’ve been dead my whole life?
My arms feel stronger with the memory of the rocks that make me.
“It’s hard to make yourself die forever.” —TM
If you have a problem with the word “god,” replace it with the word “love.”
After the word “god” became the word “love,” rocks became books, and books rocks. It makes sense to me. The longer I live with books and words, the more I enjoy their erosion.
Loving libraries, tabernacles of impermanence, is like deliriously trying to preserve the most delicate and ephemeral things: the dead katydid on my windowsill, or people, or snowflake crystals, or love.
In death, might we have access to the books that never had a chance to get written?
In this afterlife library we’ll dissolve back into the many, the microscopic. I’ll browse. I’ll read. I’ll lose concepts of period and length. I’ll lose bits of myself in books, in soil. Alphabet as molecule. Page as ecosystem. Here’s the Natural Science section. Here’s poetry. Here’s the Universe. Skin cells will become dust; flesh, food; bone to stone. Along with every book we never had the chance to read in life we might find the ghost books too, texts that were never written or never finished, phantom books with invisible and unverifiable Dewey Decimal numbers.
While there is a finality to knowledge, there is an infinity to what we don’t know.
The desire for bodies is rooted in our mortality. The desire for books shares a similar fevered passion with our decomposition. We will never be able to read all the books or love all the bodies. We feel the comfort of our smallness, our minerals, our parts.
Sight contains so much imagination, one wonders if the view of a mountain is fiction or nonfiction.
Imagine the library shaken like a snow globe, discrete ideas fall gently on a reader within a contained space.
Delusion can be close to revelation. Birding delights me. Believing delights me. It’s a game. It’s artifice. It’s art. Barry Holstun Lopez writes of the great blue heron, “If you will not speak I will have to consider making you up.”
Desire as lack, rather than love, a hole unfilled.
Do people come and go from our lives so that we might begin to understand what the hole contains? Holes in our bodies, in the earth, in our understanding?
I enjoy the company of the dead. They are so quiet. They know things I don’t know. The dead leave clues, and life is a puzzle of trying to read and understand these mysterious hints before the game is over.
The past is hard to keep standing up. The past is also hard to take down.
Stop the film before we hit the rocks below. Stop here, while it looks like we are only flying.
The list of books that don’t exist is without border or end.
Live forever in the pages of a book that will always be unfurling, unscrolling, unread, undead.
Mishearing is how I love the world.
What further heaven could people want than to become part of a tree?
What will happen when dumbness and discovery never have the chance to meet?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews