Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

| Log in
  1. Follow us on Facebook
  2. Follow us on Twitter
  3. Follow us on Instagram
  4. Follow us on Goodreads
  5. RSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • Cannon Book Club
    • Diversions
    • Fan Mail
    • Holiday Book Exchange
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
    • Participation Badges
    • AlabamaPink
  • Our Team
    • Leaderboard
    • The CBR Team
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Categories
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • Book Sale
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us
> FAQ Home
> Genre: Fiction > Willa & Hesper

Willa & Hesper

Willa & Hesper by Amy Feltman

February 9, 2020 by Fiat.Luxury 2 Comments

Let's be real, I also picked this up because I love the cover.I picked this up as part of this year’s BookRiot Read Harder challenge “A Debut Novel by a Queer Author.”  I picked up the Kindle Sample and then got it from the library because I knew I had to finish it.  Willa and Hesper fall in love and then break up (don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler), and then they have to deal with it: the breakup, their families, their ancestry, their traumas.  They each rebound to Europe: Willa on a Jewish heritage tour of World War II sites; Hesper visiting her ancestral home in Georgia with her kinda dysfunctional immediate family.

Feltman has some amazing wordsmithing, and the story is abrupt, interesting, and deeply felt.  It was definitely a page-turner for me.  I loved how specific each characters neuroses were, how Feltman unpeeled their emotional layers so deftly.  I loved the examination of heartbreak – especially that first, torturous heartbreak that feels like the world might split in two.  “First love and heartbreak” is not exactly new territory, but in Feltman’s hands it feels fresh.  I loved how she captured that early-20s combination of adult-ish self-awareness and almost total selfish naivete, that very pointed conflation of emotion about yourself, your heartbreak, and the state of the world at large.

There are a LOT of emotions in this book.  It is a book that deals with the Holocaust, painful family histories, being queer and newly out, natural disasters, divorce, and even opens with a sexual assault.  The patches of tenderness and hope and love make it surprisingly easy to read, despite the many heavy topics.  However, when I had put the book down and had some time to think it over, I had trouble understanding the place of each of these traumatic episodes in the greater narrative.  The characters are so absorbed in their own troubled stories, that the other truly troubling things that are introduced later in the book – the Holocaust! natural disasters that kill zoo animals!  –  are kind of lost.  So scenes at the end of the book that should have been extremely climactic–things that were written to be an emotional gut punch, or at least a symbolic gut punch–ended up just feeling a little numb and confused.

That said, it WAS very thought-provoking and she has a great way of introducing a line or an idea and then pulling on that thread throughout the book, referencing it in ways that make you go “Ohhhhh yea.  I see what you did there.”

In any case, I will definitely watch out for Feltman’s next book.  Her style is clean and engrossing and her observations about intimacy and love are fresh and warm.  I’m glad I happened upon this book.

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: amy feltman, bookriot read harder 2020, debut novel, willa & hesper

Fiat.Luxury's CBR12 Review No:8 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: amy feltman, bookriot read harder 2020, debut novel, willa & hesper ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

About Fiat.Luxury

CBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR10 participantCBR  9CBR 8CBR 7CBR 6

View Fiat.Luxury's reviews»

Comments

  1. andtheIToldYouSos says

    February 10, 2020 at 2:40 pm

    this looks neat- thanks for the heads-up! Also, thank you for linking to the Read Harder challenge; it wasn’t on my radar before, but now I want to jump in head first!

    Reply
    • faintingviolet says

      February 10, 2020 at 4:52 pm

      I’ve been doing the Read Harder Challenge for the past five years and I really enjoy it.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Recent Comments

  • markabaddon on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy ChildhoodSame. Her interpretation of vampirism was soooo cool to me as a teenager.
  • esme on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy ChildhoodOMG- the Great Brain- I wonder if it holds up? I’ll have to see. I also used the love the Three Investigators. And Encyclopedia Brown....
  • andtheIToldYouSos on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy Childhoodalso- Louis Sachar's HOLES! it came out when I was in middle school and I loved it, and my current students love the movie, but...
  • andtheIToldYouSos on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy ChildhoodHOW DID I FORGET PINKWATER?! aggh! Lizard Music, Snarkout Boys, Worms of Kukimilia... I re-read that section of the library over and over again
  • Scootsa1000 on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy ChildhoodOMG this thread is the best. I love reading about all of your favorites. I think this year I want to reread my favorite childhood...
See More Recent Comments »

Want to Help Out?

CBR has a great crew of volunteers, and we're always looking for more people to help out. If you have a specialty or are willing to learn, drop MsWas a line.

  • How You Can Donate
  • FAQ
  • Shop
  • Volunteers
  • Leaderboard
  • AlabamaPink
  • Contact

Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay
© 2021 Cannonball Read | Log in