Scribe

August 6, 2018
Hagy (Boleto) probes the weight of responsibility and the desperation of survival in a deteriorated society in this evocative, opaque tale. The unnamed protagonist once wrote letters for the survivors of an unexplained war and collapse of civilization. In the new, mostly illiterate world, her writings held strange powers of persuasion and absolution. Now she hosts the Uninvited—a nomadic population that worships her deceased sister’s healing gifts—in the fields around her secluded home and remains mostly uninvolved with the local power squabbles. When Hendricks, a strange man bearing signs of a dark past, arrives to request a letter detailing his sins, she squashes her natural suspicion of strangers and agrees to his request. Her work on this catalogue of misdeeds leads to a mesmeric blending of memory and hallucination that dredges up the protagonist’s guilt over her sister’s death and the desperate things she’s done to survive. Then, Hendricks seemingly accidentally kills an Uninvited child the protagonist dotes on, and the repercussions threaten to engulf her tenuous control over her land. Compelled by her hallucinations and attraction to Hendricks to fulfill her promise, the letter writer requests permission from local enforcer Billy Kingery for safe passage to deliver Hendricks’s letter, and Billy’s sabotage leads to a violent, disturbing conclusion involving more slippages between reality and dreams. The vagueness of setting, supernatural elements, and only partially revealed histories amp up the eeriness of this disquieting novel.

September 1, 2018

In her latest novel, Hagy (Boleto) departs from Wyoming, the locale of several of her earlier works, for a postapocalyptic world. The rural Virginia setting is recognizable, but is this the Civil War unfolding or a future cataclysm that resembles it? In this harrowing new world, sickness and societal unrest have ravaged the populace. The scribe--a witchlike woman whose writing has magical redemptive qualities--lives in the ruins of a plantation house. A large, unruly band of squatters camps on her land, riling her hostile neighbors, when a mysterious man arrives and asks her to write a letter in exchange for some scarce goods she needs. Complications arise between the two, and a journey ensues that takes the women into a dark and painful past. Hagy's narrative is hauntingly lyrical even as she leaves the details of this world vague, which contributes to its ominous sensibility. VERDICT More epic prose poem than sf, this slender, affecting meditation on grief and death, with a flavoring of Appalachian folklore stirred in, will appeal to readers of literary fiction and finely crafted prose.--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2018
In a world with few survivors and fewer rules, words become a lifeline.Set after a civil war and deadly fevers decimate the country, Hagy's (Boleto, 2012, etc.) new novel is a slim and affecting powerhouse. The nameless main character is a scribe who lives alone in her family's Appalachian farmhouse. Under the watchful eye of local overseer Billy Kingery and the Uninvited, a migrant group living on her land, she finds a way to exist in relative harmony with the people who worshiped her late sister but only tolerate her. In order to protect herself from her neighbors, she barters her gift of writing letters "on behalf of the guilty and possessed." When a mysterious man named Hendricks asks her to write a letter for him, an unknowable (yet devastating) series of events is set in motion. As Hendricks and the narrator each fulfill their end of the bargain, the secrets they have been keeping from themselves and each other are unearthed. When the letter is completed, she must journey through the wild and dangerous terrain to a crossroads to deliver it. Hagy is a careful writer; each sentence feels as solid and sturdy as stone. The descriptions of nature are especially lush: "air-burned hints of lightning" and "the sunset was the color of persimmons." Steeped in folklore, the mystical and unexplainable lace themselves throughout the novel: Dreams bleed into reality; apparitions appear; time becomes malleable. Stories--whether written, oral, or biblical--are at the book's center. In this post-apocalyptic world, the stories we tell about ourselves and others can be a matter of life or death.Timely and timeless; a deft novel about the consequences and resilience of storytelling.

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Starred review from September 15, 2018
Hagy's follow up to Boleto ?(2013) is set in a world ravaged first by civil war and then by fever. The survivors live off the land and the special skills they possess. The unnamed main character is sustained by her ability to write. She lives in her family's farmhouse, kept company by a trio of mangy dogs and the memory of her dead sister. And then a man named Hendricks steps onto her land, asking her not only to write a letter for him, filled with the confessions of his misdeeds, but to deliver it, as well. Reluctant to leave her home but in need of supplies, she agrees. It's a decision that leads her into unexpected conflict with her neighbors, from a wandering group known as the Uninvited to the dangerous local kingpin, and forces her to confront her complicated emotions about her sister's death. Taut and tense, with both a dreamlike quality and a strong sense of place, Hagy's brief but powerful tale will indelibly haunt readers long after the final page is turned.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)