Her Here

December 15, 2020
A former scholar searches for a missing woman in an unorthodox way. In Dennis' elusive debut novel, Elena--a young woman grieving her late mother--finds herself in the pages of a missing woman's journal. Still traumatized by her mother's death six years ago, Elena is plagued with memory loss and a slippery sense of self: "Forgetting is how the body keeps itself sane." When Siobh�n, her late mother's friend, reaches out with an unconventional job offer, Elena moves to Paris, leaving behind her graduate program and long-term boyfriend. Siobh�n wants Elena to find Ella, her biological daughter, who fled to Thailand when her adoptive parents told her the truth about her birth--and has been missing for the past six years. Craving closure, she asks Elena to rewrite Ella's impressionistic journals "as an account of what happened" and use that narrative to unearth clues that may be hidden in plain sight. Physically and emotionally unmoored for years, Elena loses herself in the task almost immediately: "The difference now is purpose--one to string itself through my days, adding tautness, definition, orienting them on an axis of someone else." If the journal rewriting is an interesting (if convoluted) premise, Dennis' sensory prose leads to a fascinating exploration of identity, grief, and time. As Ella's journals tip further toward madness, the two women's lives become more intertwined; the physical, mental, and emotional boundaries between them become nearly nonexistent. Dennis' abilities to blur fact and fiction--through structure and pronoun use--and wield language elevate the novel. Her prose is sensory and unsettling: "three days, ample and round, like peaches ripening in the summer markets"; "I was becoming other than myself, to my delight and terror." With an unsurprising (though satisfying) ending, the women come to terms with their lives--the ones they currently inhabit and the one Elena has created. An experimental, psychological debut about selfhood, fiction, and memory.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 11, 2021
Dennis attempts a Modianoesque detective story in her lukewarm debut. The book begins as Elena, 29, an American working on a dissertation about filmmaker Chris Marker in Paris, is contacted by Siobhan, a family friend. Siobhan had given up her daughter, Ella, in an open adoption years ago. After Siobhan received Ella’s journals out of the blue, postmarked from Thailand, she contacted Ella’s adoptive parents and discovered Ella had gone missing. Siobhan, believing Elena is a writer, proposes Elena rewrite the journals to help Siobhan “see” Ella. The premise is part of the book’s problem; Siobhan’s request is so improbable that it’s difficult to take seriously. The journals, written while Ella was living in Chiang Rai, Thailand, start out as a fairly normal travelogue, but as Ella’s relationship with a young Canadian “avid sensualist” sours, Ella begins to drift. Elena, as she obsessively reads and writes, becomes preoccupied with the journals and Ella’s life, and with her own grief for her dead mother, who struggled with mental illness. Descriptions of Paris and of Chiang Rai are sharp and lovely, and many of the questions the plot raises pique, though the dialogue feels stilted. This never fully comes to life. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

Starred review from March 1, 2021

DEBUT Meeting in Paris with sculptor Siobh�n, an old friend of her mother, late-twenties Elena is offered a startling proposition: Siobh�n wants her to craft a narrative from the journals left behind by Siobh�n's daughter, Ella, who vanished in Thailand six years previously. This act, Siobh�n believes, will clarify what really happened to Ella, who learned only as an adult that Siobh�n had birthed her and given her away. Even as Elena abandons her dissertation and boyfriend in America, moving to a Montmartre studio Siobh�n makes available, Dennis's elegant yet propulsive debut becomes much more than a missing-persons search. Elena is also trying to learn more about her own artist mother, gifted yet twice institutionalized, whose shocking death left Elena with a six-month memory gap. Adding further tension, Ella's troubled state of mind worryingly mirrors--and might amplify--Elena's. The narrative shifts gracefully among Elena's story, the elliptical journal entries, and the increasingly interesting reconstruction of a life for Ella, who's found in Elena's pages if not in reality. VERDICT Elena's narrative-within-a-narrative nicely reveals the creative process, while Dennis's larger story confirms the value of living boldly even as we step back to frame our experiences. Highly recommended.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.