Heiroglyphics by Jill McCorkle tells the tail of two families: Lil and Frank were attracted to each other by shared childhood tragedy and find themselves at their end of lives in the small NC town where Frank's childhood tragedy occurred. Shelley is a single mother and court recorder struggling to cope with the horror of her own childhood and protect her children from the stigma that type of childhood can bring to the victims. Shelley also happens to live in the very same home Frank did when he lived in NC as a boy.

The experience of reading this book was very much like spending several afternoons listening to your grandparents tell you the stories that were most formative in their lives, except this book doesn't leave out the bits your grandparents might omit for the sake of propriety. I love how this novel drips with nostalgia and imperfect memories. Lil's passages are written as journal entries, which especially adds to this feeling of times past. What is also effective is the way Lil and Frank recount their memories of the same events and time periods: each telling just slightly aligned to its owners biases and motivations.

If you love a book that goes deep on character development and don't need much plot to keep the pages turning, Hieroglyphics may be the book for you.. The writing is brilliant and I just loved the way McCorkle structured her story to really show us all the angles of who these characters are and how they became.

Lil and Frank have been together for many many years, initially bonding over losing a parent in a tragic accident. During their time together, they have both realized the holes left in their lives because of the loss of these parents. Lil and Frank decide to move to North Carolina to be close to their daughter and where Frank grew up. While Lil is spending her time gathering letters and diaries to ensure she doesn’t leave holes for her children, Frank is focused on his childhood home and what he left behind.

 
This book examines family and the history we hope to leave for future generations. The author did a wonderful job of highlighting the emotion and capturing the reader. This book will have you thinking about your family and the choices you’ve made and the story you are leaving behind.


I really enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it. Thank you again, Algonquin books and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

There are some really wonderful books that are told from varying perspectives where everything gets tied together in the end. Unfortunately, “Hieroglyphics” is not one of them. I kept waiting for the moment when I would feel the threads of grief and loss unite the characters and their journeys. But that moment never arrived for me.

Jill McCorkle’s novel is told from four points of view: Frank, a man whose life was turned upside down when his father died in a train accident when he was still just a boy; his wife, Lil, who similarly lost her mother in the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in the 1940s; Shelley, a young mother living in the home Frank used to reside in; and Harvey, Shelley’s little boy whose imagination (and obsession with serial killers) often gets him in trouble. Most of the story is pretty straightforward and most of it is told in accounts of events that happened in the past. But Lil’s story is relayed through notes she’s left for her children and her journals. With this choice, the action of the story jumps around quite a bit through many different decades, which made the plot feel disjointed to me.

My main issue is that I never felt a steady tie that made these character’s stories feel relevant to each other. It was never clear to me why Shelley and Harvey’s stories even belonged in the same book as Frank and Lil’s. There were so many jumps in time that made it difficult to follow along. This form of storytelling was even more disappointing when I got to the end of the book and there were still so many unanswered questions in my mind. There was also a weird quirk where random bits of information were mentioned multiple times – I couldn’t tell whether these repetitive parts were a stylistic choice or just mistakes.

The part of the novel that felt the strongest (and most interesting) to me were the accounts of the deaths of Frank and Lil’s parents. Because both of the events actually happened (the nightclub fire and the train accident), the moments being described felt authentic and intriguing. I almost wish the book had focused solely on these two children and what they experienced rather than what they were like as married adults.

I wanted so badly to love this novel. It’s totally possible that I just missed the symbolism and broader themes that were meant to be there. But, nevertheless, I won’t be raving about this one to anyone.

Imagine my sheer excitement at getting an invite from @algonquinbooks to review an Advance Reader Copy and participate in their virtual blog tour for Jill McCorkle’s Hieroglyphics, out TODAY. OMG, it was like Christmas morning for this verified book nerd. Would I like participate? Would Hemingway like a Rum Runner and six-toed cat? Yes. The answer is YES, I would love to review Hieroglyphics.

In all my excitement of being asked to post a book review (versus my usual practice of forcing my five cents about beloved books uninvited to social media), it only later crossed my mind – what if I hated it? Fortunately, there was absolutely no reason to worry about that.

Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle is a beautifully told story that intertwines narratives from four different characters: an elderly married couple; a young, struggling single Mom and her quirky son. They are linked by a house that was once the childhood home of the elderly husband and is the current, now slightly dilapidated home to the young recently abandoned Mom and her son.

After retiring and returning to the NC town where he spent his formative years, the husband longs to go back inside the home and it’s basement for nostalgia’s sake (and something more, which unfolds later). I don’t know about you, but that longing to go back to certain places from childhood is super relatable. I’d give anything to go inside my late grandmother’s house in Chattanooga, I can still picture every room perfectly – and in my mind it’s still just the same as it was in the 80s.

After establishing the house as what links them, the story travels back and forth through decades, ping ponging between pivotal events in each person’s life – slowly unearthing experiences of profound loss, stunning betrayal, family dysfunction, discovery, redemption, love and acceptance. If it sounds like it could be confusing or difficult to follow the boomerang of past and present among all four characters, it isn’t. The author deftly moves between narratives seamlessly – admittedly at times I found myself more invested in one character’s story over another’s and wanting to go stay with their storyline a bit longer, but in the end the balance works in a way that only a masterful writer could pull off in my opinion.

One of the main takeaways I got from this wonderful book is something I think is super relevant right now: that every single person is dealing with things you never know about. Behind that old man sitting next to you at the doctor’s office, the elderly woman you passed on the interstate, the young Mom listlessly dropping items in her grocery cart or the boy playing Superman by himself with a towel wrapped like a cape around his shoulders down the street – every one of them (like you) has a story, a turning point, a weight they carry on their shoulders, a life incident that shapes who we are and the paths we ultimately take in life.

I loved going into the “cave” if you will with Jill McCorkle, with her shining her unique literary light on the characters and translating them for us lucky readers in Hieroglyphics. Highly recommend!

Each character in Hieroglyphics is haunted by the past. For both Frank and Lil it is the tragic death of a parent that haunts them. For Shelley it is the decline of her marriage and a long kept secret. And for Harvey, Shelley’s son, it is the lingering scar from a cleft palette surgery.

The past is brought to the forefront when Frank and Lil move from Boston to North Carolina to retire closer to their daughter. The town in which they now reside is the same town Frank moved to with his mother after his father’s death when he was ten years old. Frank thinks that he will find answers from that time in his life by revisiting the house in which he lived. He just has one problem: the owner will not let him in.

Shelley is the owner of that home. She lives there with her son Harvey, who has an over active imagination, often haunted by ghosts. When Frank shows up at her front door the first time, Shelley is leery of his intentions. She just moved in and now some stranger is asking to look around claiming he used to live there. She tells him maybe when her husband is home. However they will be both be waiting a long time for that.

Lil is desperate to leave a history for her children while she still remembers. She begins sifting through old diary entries as well as letters, cards, and notes. Some if the secrets she uncovers are ones that her and Frank don’t necessarily want known. But some of the things that Lil uncovers will help them find some answers to the questions they have grown up with.

But Hieroglyphics is a novel that explores more than just the secrets and the pain the past can cause through out ones life. It is a novel that looks into what its like to be a mother, a father, a child and never fully know what their parents are thinking, what secrets they are keeping, who they really are.

McCorkle beautifully connects Frank and Lil to Shelley and Harvey. Four people who are united by loss and the search for more. Hieroglyphics takes a look at family dynamics and how they are shaped and reshaped by the past and throughout our lives.

When a book pulls you into its orbit as Jill McCorkle's Hieroglyphics does, you know you are in for something special.



Lil and Frank are elderly, retired and moving from the home where they raised their family in Boston to North Carolina to be near their daughter and grandchildren. Frank also grew up in that area, and one thing he wants to do is see the house where he lived with his mother, brother and stepfather.



Frank knocks on the door of his old home, and finds single mom Shelley living there with her young son Harvey. Shelley works as a stenographer at the courthouse, and has to record the trials of people charged with horrific crimes.



She is haunted by the terrible things that people do, and her young son Harvey is obsessed with ghosts, graveyards and serial killers, which upset the other children and teachers with whom he comes into contact.



Shelley is reluctant to allow Frank into her home, knowing that women who are too trusting get killed. Frank leaves, but he is drawn to the house and trying to come to terms with how his life there as young boy affected his adult life.



Frank's father was killed when he was young boy, and Lil lost her mother to cancer when she was a young girl. When they began dating, these losses bonded them together.



While packing up their old home, Lil finds notebooks and letters that she kept. In these notebooks she logged her daily life, filled with mundane things such as the weather for the day, and her daily tasks. They were also filled with more- her deeper thoughts about her marriage, her struggles as a woman, wife, and mother.



McCorckle brings her characters to life through their memories. When Lil remembers lovingly taking out the Christmas ornaments to decorate the tree, or how being alone in her dance studio reminded her of her mother, although these memories belong to Lil, they bring to mind our own memories.



Through Frank and Lil, we see how marriage can be difficult, and through Shelley we see how tough it is to be a single parent with a child who others see as an outsider.



Hieroglyphics is the kind of book that sneaks up on you. As you read, you are drawn into Lil, Frank and Shelley's interior worlds, and you find yourself feeling as if you know these characters on a deeper level. As McCorkle writes, "A story is easier to fall into than your own life." I highly recommend Hieroglyphics.



Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Jill McCorkle's tour.

Hieroglyphics is told from three POVs, Lil, Frank (who are married), and Shelley. The timeline skips around a lot, so sometimes it’s the present and sometimes it’s the past. Lil’s story is told through journal entries, whereas Frank & Shelley’s are told through narration. Shelley lives in Frank’s childhood home, and this is the connecting factor between their stories. It’s a powerful story about their lives, childhood, growing & changing, and hiding from the past.

The ending of this book was fabulous. Some books are meant to have an ending that leaves you to draw your own conclusions, and that’s exactly what Hieroglyphics does. It’s not a true conclusion, but it didn’t leave you hanging. It ended just like life does, abruptly & without warning but with the overall sense that everything will be okay. And that was beautiful.

I had a hard time with the shifting timelines in this book, but if this is something you like & are used to then it shouldn’t stop you from reading this book. The writing, though amazing, rambles at times – but I believe it’s meant to be indicative of the person’s state of mind at the time. It does serve this purpose & give depth to the story but it also made it hard for me to focus on the plot.

At times each story was so heartbreaking and moving that it was even hard to read. It just showed how much people go through in life, and how often people hide from their past. But this book relives the past, celebrates it, because the journey to the end of the magical part even if it doesn’t go as planned. Reading the three characters growth over time was an experience that I’m not used to as Hieroglyphics is out of my normal genre. But at the end, you really see exactly what all the build up was for, and it was worth it.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Know in advance that this skips back and forth in time and between four narrators- Lil, Frank, Shelley, and Harvey. Lil and Frank have just moved to North Carolina to be closer to their daughter as they hit their late 80s. They are both haunted by the death of a parent- her mother in the Coconut Club fire and his father in a train crash. Lil tells her story and the story of their marriage as she sorts papers and her notebooks. Frank wants to get into the house where he was raised, where Shelley now lives with her young son Harvey. Shelley's a court reporter who has made a big mistake; Harvey struggles with a big imagination and his misses his older brother Jason. This sparkles in parts and in others it, to be honest, drags. Harvey is the least interesting of the narrators but his mother is wonderful and thus I didn't like how McCorkle used Jason at the end to tell the parts of her story did not know. I'm torn about this. Lil and Shelley are the most fleshed out of the characters and thus my attachment was to them. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. McCorkle's fans will welcome this and other readers should give it a read.

Jill McCorkle, the author of "Hieroglyphics" has written a poignant and intriguing novel. The Genres for this novel are Literary Fiction and Family Drama. Much of the story takes place in North Carolina. There are various timelines in this story. The author describes her characters as complex, complicated, dysfunctional. The themes of this story deal with the obsession of death, and the difficulty of living. There is a contrast between older characters, vs. younger characters, the children. Many of the ideas that have passed through the generations have been imprinted from the grandparents to the parents to the children.

Jill McCorkle vividly describes the characters, the events, the plot, and the scenery. This is a challenging and at times difficult book to read. Each of the characters has the memories of their family which some choose to relive and some choose to forget. Some of the family deaths were from a train wreck and a fire. A few of the characters are obsessed with the scene of the accident.

Frank and Lil are an older couple. Frank is obsessed with death, and Lil records and keeps notes of what is going on. Frank wants to visit his childhood home where Shelley is raising a young troubled son. Shelley is fearful of letting the older man and his wife come into the house.  Shelley's son is obsessed with strange and weird things, and because of his strange ideas presents a problem acting out in school. Shelley transcribes cases in the court and recently has been immersed in a murder.

This is a heavy thought-provoking novel that I would recommend for readers who enjoy a challenge and a dark story.

I found Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle to be so evocative that I had to step away several times while reading to grapple with various phrases or passages that really hit me.⁠

This novel is a character-driven, slow burn with a non-linear structure. What I loved most was making sense of who each character was as they attempted to make sense themselves.⁠

If you have read and loved fellow 2020 release, Writers and Lovers by Lily King, then you need to run and pick up this novel. Both novels explore life, mortality, and grief in such profound ways. Both will leave you in a quiet awe.⁠

Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy.⁠

Thank you to Algonquin Books for the ARC copy for this review. To read my full review, please visit: https://wigginswords.com/category/book-reviews/

“A story is easier to fall into than your own life...”
– Jill McCorkle, Hieroglyphics

Memory and history share a disingenuous and diverting crossroads, much of which becomes a diluted and dilatable personal history. Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle, recounts the elder couple, Frank and Lil (look to the past), the first a history professor and the latter a dance instructor, from Boston, Massachusetts. They possess an unsaid understanding communicated on the visage of blunt and esoteric notes that last into their retirement in North Carolina. The younger couple, Shelley and Brent (look to the present), a stenographer and car mechanic, have an unofficial divorce, leaving this mother and wife to rear her unenlightened and impressionable son, Harvey, in North Carolina. Frank has unfinished business with his past and to complete it, he must visit Shelley’s home, his childhood home.

Two tragical epochs, Boston’s Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942 and the Rennert, North Carolina train wreck of 1943, challenge these tragical couples as they overlap each other in a time-bending way through mementos, keepsakes, notes, and personal effects. Much of Hieroglyphics is headspace work, a tedium that promises and processes mundanity. In this sense, memory is made a personal history where the past catches up with the present and vice versa. The innate truth (the absence of identity) and the adaptive truth (the loss of innocence) create a transformative internal conflict. The value of Lil’s hording tendencies and her hair-splitting plurality is not without its sincere reasons, as notional as they often are. Frank is a believable history buff, lost in times not his own as he comes to terms with a rocky childhood and an avalanching adulthood. Similarly, Shelley’s and Harvey’s inappropriate but wholesomely exaggerated use of escapism leave the mother and son stilted and siphoned as a family unit.

McCorkle’s novel succeeds in its sparsity or narrowness but also suffers from it. Circuitous paths lead to an ineffability, one that poses memory, however unreliable or indelible, as akin to living beyond any timeline’s marker. The bottleneck then, and a necessary one, is knowing what to part with and what to hold onto. The trouble is knowing and remembering the fragility and mystery of words said or written and unsaid or unwritten. Deciding between meaning and meanings, death’s forgetfulness and life’s displacement or life’s forgetfulness and death’s displacement, for posterity. Hieroglyphics leaves more unsaid than said through memory as history, leaves the pieces behind to be picked up again by the impromptu historians, and runs out of track long before the train has left the station.

Hieroglyphics is creatively written and certainly not the same book you have read many times before. The story is told almost entirely in the past, with very little in the present to move it forward. I found it a little difficult to follow at the beginning as there are multiple narrators and I'd consider some unreliable, but this becomes easier as you get to know the characters. This is a darker, grittier, starkly honest book; definitely one that you want to dedicate time and serious attention to in order to follow it well. I thought it was a very interesting commentary on the accuracy of memory and end of life. We all have our own ways of remembering and dealing with the issues of our past, and this book brings to light how much both affect our current lives and our relationships with others.

Thank you to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for my ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Unfortunately this is a DNF for me at 28%. I don’t enjoy not finishing a book but o also know when one isn’t for me. There are some wonderfully written recollections by Harvey & Lil as they reflect over their own childhood and raising a family. By almost a third through I expect to feel some clear plot line. It was Shelley’s pages of thoughts going no where during a trial that made me finally set it aside. Maybe I need to pick this up at a later time.

Insightful and profound, Heiroglyphics reveals how the past, present, and future intertwine to determine who we are. The story is told from several points of view: an elderly couple, Lil and Frank: Shelley, a mom trying to keep her sons safe and to shield them from the pain of the past; and Harvey, Shelley’s young son. This gripping book deals with parenthood, life, death, and loss with candor and intimacy.

“Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically—lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.

Now, after many years in Boston, they have retired in North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d rather forget. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.”

I enjoyed the multiple points of view in this, and how it spanned many decades, giving us a glimpse into the past. However, I found it a bit hard to keep track of sometimes since the dates jumped around and didn’t move in chronological order. I also found it pretty slow moving, but did enjoy the descriptive writing.

And I guess that's why we hold on to our bits and pieces in the first place, because we aren't immortal, and though denial fills our days and years, especially those that have slipped away, that kernel of truth is always lodged within. We are all haunted by something-- ~from Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle

Through a dozen moves and the purges each involved, there were boxes that followed me. They remained sealed and taped in each successive basement, but I knew they were there for when I would need them.

The boxes held my diaries dating back to 1963 when I was ten, poems and unfinished novels I had written, scrapbooks and mementos.

There were other boxes, too. Boxes of photographs and slides, books owned by my grandfather or mother or father, my grandfather's papers and newspaper articles, directories and yearbooks, dad's memoirs, mom's medical history.

They were the 'bits and pieces' of my life and my parent's life and my grandfather's life.

I have always been a keeper of things. I see the trait in my family, especially keeping memories and telling stories of long ago.

In Jill McCorkle's new novel Hieroglyphics, Lil is eighty-five and worried about forgetting, but her childhood memories remain vivid and clear. "I can close my eyes and know every square inch," she says of her childhood home.

Oh, me, too! I dream of the 19th c farmhouse I grew up in. I know the view from every window by heart, the turning of the stairs, the weight of layers of blankets in the unheated bedroom.

"I am homesick and I am timesick...I miss all that no longer is," Lil says.

Lil is married to Frank, who is also haunted by the past, filled with "sadness and an awareness of the shadows." When he was ten years old his father died in a train wreck, extinguishing his mother's happiness. Frank is fixated on returning to his childhood home, hoping to find what he left behind.

Frank's childhood home is now occupied by single mom Shelley and her child Harvey. Harvey is fearful, misses his father, sees ghosts, and losses himself in an alter-ego superhero with a mustache that covers the scar from his cleft palate surgery. Shelley is a court reporter who is overinvolved with the trial, in trouble for writing her thoughts into the transcript.

Each character is struggling with the scars of their past. They have kept things secret, and they seek to understand the mystery of their parents.

This is a dense book, emotionally charged, with a story that opens like a night blooming flower. There is darkness, with some flashes of humor and light. It tugged at my heart. And it chilled me with recognition and the knowledge that in the blink of an eye I will be Lil, leaving behind those boxes of diaries.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I had no idea when I started this beautifully written novel that it would trigger so many wonderful, and at times sad, memories of my grandparents while also forcing me to reflect on my forty-something life. It’s funny how we cherish very different things as we age and some of the moments we regard as dull tend to flower with time. Jill McCorkle has the ability to make average moments feel significant in a way that resonates with you long after the book is closed. For those who love literary fiction by authors like Elizabeth Strout and Louise Erdrich, you will love this book.

The characters were very real and well thought out. The language looms with the reader through memories that feel like scraps of paper taped to a rainy window. Although at times the story shifts in a scattered manner, I found that my slight confusion only added to the sense of age, loss, and disorientation. I’m positive that wasn’t Jill McCorkle’s intention, but even when I had to pause to figure out who or where I was, I continued to be engaged in the book.

McCorkle has woven a quilt of three average adults who have hidden secrets or details of their life as a way to control their own narrative or feel stable. At the end of life, when it becomes so difficult to decipher threads of time, that control tends to become less important or even possible. This book explores the way we remember the good and the bad and how those nuggets of wisdom can prevent us from seeing the entire picture until we are too far away to fix them.

Thank you, Algonquin Books, for inviting me to read this heartfelt book and thank you, Jill McCorkle for writing it.

I was unable to finish this and will not be posting a full review to my blog. I'm sure this will work for some but it did not work for me. Thank you for your consideration and I appreciate the opportunity.

This is a beautifully written book which contains the stories of four people....Two of them are elderly, one is a young mother and the fourth is her young son. It may be that this book came to me at a time when I am living in the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, but I was touched by the memories the elderly couple held. I did find this to be a slow moving novel and at times felt muddled (like memories are). Nonetheless I still looked forward to reading it. It is interesting to consider that the value of a person is held in the memories of those people who touched them. And the question would be is how much of a memory is remembered to fit into your own story. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Hieroglyphics

Author: Jill McCorkle

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 3/5

Recommended For...: contemporary reads

Publication Date: June 9, 2020

Genre: Contemporary

Recommended Age: 17+ (death, grief, heartbreak, and stalkerish behaviors)

Publisher: Algonquin

Pages: 320

Synopsis: Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically—lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.

Now, after many years in Boston, they have retired in North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d rather forget. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.

Review: Oveall, this book was good. The characters were well developed and the plot was intriguing enough to keep my attention throughout the novel. The book also has good world building.

However, I felt like the story telling was really fragmented and all over the place and the use of 4 POVs didn’t do well for this book. The book was good, but it really takes a lot of thinking to keep the pieces together and at the end you’re mentally exhausted. Also, Frank is very creepy and it just creeps me out how he stalks Shelley.

Verdict: It was ok, but confusing.