3.5 "thought provoking, intense, not quite there" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and HarperCollins Canada for an e-copy. I am providing my honest review. This will be released latter part of August 2021.

A middle aged high school teacher named Clare (in suburban Texas) has written a first person account of her recollections with the "hum"(an unrelenting sound), her fall from grace, the dissolution of her family and her intense collaboration with neighbors in utilizing this sound to attain spiritual nirvana. She also experiences an intense attachment with a teenage boy throughout the narrative.

Mr. Tannahill (who is an award winning playwright and author) has written a compelling and intense novel questioning the nature of spirituality, mental health, and the quest of fringe groups to offer support and care. The novel has a trajectory that increases in volume and disintegration posing interesting questions and dilemmas to the reader along the way.

I was engrossed throughout and felt that this was a very good and worthwhile read.

This did not reach four star level for a variety of MINOR reasons. One, there was a fair tinge of self consciousness here that I could not shake off. Two, the politics and representation of different types of people felt contrived (lots of pseudo feminism and queer politics that just felt off). Three, and this is just my preference, the lack of quotation marks for dialogue drove me bonkers.

I feel that this book needed a good re-write or two to bring this to the status of a provocative literary sociological thriller. This was well worth reading, nonetheless !! I look forward to reading more by Mr. Tannahill.