Scribe (Hagy) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Scribe, which begins with the baying of hounds and ends with silence, reminds us on every page that humans remain the storytelling animal, and that therein might lie our salvation.… In this brave new world, a woman with a pen may prove mightier than a man with a sword.
Lydia Peele - New York Times Book Review


setting, identity and motivations are shrouded in Blue Ridge mist, Hagy’s language is intense and crisp.… Hagy does a splendid job of intertwining the strange threads in her novel, and readers with a taste for magical doings will not be disappointed.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


An original addition to the post-apocalyptic genre, Scribe reaffirms the power of the pen and the surviving quality of the human spirit.
Arkansas International


It’s a hungry book—one where every sentence seems to imply a second that it never offers; where every page and every paragraph offers the ghost of a feast, but never lets you eat.
NPR.org


Fans of Fiona Mozley’s Elmet will revel in this genre-busting feminist folktale of a novel, which is as rooted in its own particular, peculiar time as it is relevant to the concerns of 2018.
Vanity Fair


[An] eerie, artfully etched post-apocalyptic tale.
BBC Culture


Hagy probes the weight of responsibility and the desperation of survival in a deteriorated society in this evocative, opaque tale.… The vagueness of setting, supernatural elements, and only partially revealed histories amp up the eeriness of this disquieting novel.
Publishers Weekly


[A] postapocalyptic world.… [I]s this the Civil War unfolding or a future cataclysm that resembles it?… More epic prose poem than sf, this [is a] slender, affecting meditation on grief and death, with a flavoring of Appalachian folklore stirred in. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal


(Starred review) [S]et in a world ravaged first by civil war and then by fever.… 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. — Kristine Huntley
Booklist


(Starred review) A slim and affecting powerhouse.… Hagy is a careful writer; each sentence feels as solid and sturdy as stone.… Timely and timeless; a deft novel about the consequences and resilience of storytelling.
Kirkus Reviews