HER HERE (2021)

Her Here by Amanda Dennis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What does it mean to get inside another so you can find them? This complicated, hypnotic, and literate debut has been described as "a daughter coming to terms with the loss of her mother, and a mother coming to terms with the loss of her daughter."

FIRST LINE: "I have been up all night and now the day is gray, the narrow streets slick and silvered outside the taxi window."

THE STORY: Elena has not come to terms with her mother's death. Arriving in Paris to study, she accepts an invitation to meet with Siobhan, an old friend of her mother. Siobhan's daughter Ella, adopted and raised by a American family, has been missing for 6 years. Although she hadn't seen Ella since she was 3 months old, Ella had sent Siobhan a set of journals kept while she was living in Thailand. Siobhan offers to pay Elena generously to put aside her studies and re-interpret Ella's life using her journals as a way to find her. Elena reluctantly accepts but eventually begins to lose herself in the work.

WHAT I THOUGHT: It's a bit hard to get acclimated with the constant alternating between narrator and journals, but once engaged in the story the author provides subtle signals to guide the reader.

Using the names Elena and Ella is obviously another way to show how intertwined these two lives become, but it often causes the reader's flow to be interrupted while making sure which is which.

The language is beautiful and difficult with many esoteric references. Still the descriptions of Paris and Chiang Rai, Thailand are lovely and enticing.

BOTTOM LINE: If you are fascinated by the thought of reading an "existential detective story," don't hesitate to pick up Her Here. Otherwise it is not for the casual mystery reader.

DISCLAIMER: A copy of was provided to me by Bellevue Literary Press/Net Galley for an honest review.

Trade Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press (March 9, 2021)
ISBN-10: 1942658761
ISBN-13: 978-1942658764

THE AUTHOR: Born in Philadelphia, Amanda Dennis studied modern languages at Princeton and Cambridge Universities before earning her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded a Whited Fellowship in creative writing. An avid traveler, she has lived in six countries, including Thailand, where she spent a year as a Princeton in Asia fellow. She has written about literature for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Guernica, and she is assistant professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the American University of Paris, where she is researching the influence of 20th-century French philosophy on the work of Samuel Beckett. Her Here is her first novel.

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