Books: Briefly Noted

Mr. Splitfoot,by Samantha Hunt (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). This gripping novel alternates between two story lines: in one, the budding con artists Nat and Ruth struggle to survive in an abusive Christian foster home; in the other, set some years in the future, Ruth, inexplicably rendered mute, leads her niece, Cora, on a journey across New York State on foot. The narratives, which twist together into a shocking dénouement, are marked by ghost stories, from Nat and Ruth’s forays into the world of mediums and séances to Cora’s struggle to piece together her aunt’s past. “History holds up one side of our lives and fiction the other,” one character tells Cora, and the novel’s pleasures lie in the intersections between the two. The Past,by Tessa Hadley (Harper). An extended family of four…

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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 7, 2016

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