Garner
Reviews

A Lit Blog Co-op Read This! Selection

Publishers Weekly (starred review):
"[An] exceptional debut . . . at the end of summer 1925, during Garner's transition from a prosperous farming town to a decaying vacation destination for a group of wealthy urbanites . . . four main characters nurse hearts as brittle as autumn's foliage, and their hurts lead them to places as frightening as dark forests and as shocking as the cool water of a stream."

Providence Journal :
"A fine, furtive, enigmatic and deliciously readable debut."

Believer :
"It is rare to feel so truly transported by a work of fiction. Therefore, at the risk of alliterative (and accolade) excess, I dub Garner a masterly, multi-voiced, mood-altering mystery—and a debut so wise, certain, and cleverly empathetic as to seem the work of a sure-footed pro."

Monadnock Ledger :
"Surprising and remarkable . . . And told so beautifully and surely, with such an ear to the past and an eye to the land, that you can't help getting lost in that tangle of forest and dreams and passions."

Nashua Telegraph :
"Part murder mystery, part history, part social commentary and all over poetry, in Garner , Allio has created a haunting New Hampshire classic."

Chicago Tribune :
"In a remarkable way, Allio has given the New Hampshire of Robert Frost a new visage. . . . Allio's debut novel captures well the tang of rural New Hampshire a full lifetime back, a vantage point from which 'Massachusetts is a different country. Vermont is for deviants. The state of Maine warrants a cold respect. The rest of America is of no real consideration.' Absent the author's postmodern novelistic techniques, which are far less jarring in Garner than one might expect, given its setting, she has written an old-fashioned Gothic thriller."

St. Paul Pioneer Press :
"Gripping."

Splendid :
"Lovely . . . interwoven with rich details."

David Abrams, January Magazine :
"Easily the most important book I've read this year."

Ed Champion, Return of the Reluctant:
"One of the most beautifully written books of the year, jamming an incredible amount of human insight and intricate prose into its 232 pages. Not a single word has been wasted here. This is a novel to be savored and reread."

Dan Wickett, Emerging Writers Network:
"Allio's writing—her choice of words and the cadences she utilizes—transports the reader into 1925 New Hampshire. . . . She tells a tale that is interesting, both in and of itself, and in the manner in which she brings it forth, and that combination makes Garner a book worth tracking down and truly enjoying."

MostlyFiction.com:
"The starkness of 1925 New Hampshire, even during its most bountiful season, preys upon the characters in Kirstin Allio's lyrical debut novel about a small, sail-shaped town and the tragedy that defines it . . . whether the author is describing a woodland or a person or even a roundabout truth, she writes with gorgeous precision."

Booklist :
"Allio's first novel is a shockingly beautiful work about the clash of age and youth, experience and purity, and urban and rural life in 1920s New Hampshire. With farming less lucrative than in the past, the Giddens family makes the controversial decision to take in summer boarders. The farm draws wealthy, young, and overconfident New Yorkers, and the Puritan town of Garner shakes its collective head. Through Allio's stunning prose, the tension of this situation is tangible and thrilling, even more so due to the knowledge, presented in the opening pages, that young Frances Giddens will turn up dead. As the story focuses alternately on various characters fascinated with the elusive Frances—from a lonely female boarder to the town's curious postman—we learn about the complexity of Garner. And this farming town proves to be the novel's strongest character. Against the haunting backdrop of an ancient forest, Garner is still stinging from the Civil War, a dwindling population, and rapidly changing times, and its conflicts make for an alluring and unforgettable novel."

Rebecca Brown:
"Nathaniel Hawthorne knew all about what happens when an individual's obligations to history and community meet a repressed passion. In Kirstin Allio's strange, startling and beautifully written first novel, Hawthorne may have found a worthy 21st century heir to his dark, evocative fable-making about that most American of locations, New England."

Carole Maso:
"An elegant, luminous, moving work of lyric prose. Every page shimmers."