Locals may know Hannah Pittard’s name because it was attached to the as-yet-unopened Southern Crescent restaurant in Belmont. But with positive reviews of her debut novel The Fates Will Find Their Way appearing everywhere from the Times‘ Book Review and Washington Post, to the Onion’s A.V. Club, that may soon change.
The Fates Will Find Their Way starts with the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl on Halloween night and ends with the boys she left in her wake, now men, struggling to shoulder the weight of that trauma—and many others. Pittard now splits her time between Charlottesville in Chicago, where she teaches fiction at DePaul.
Writes the Post’s fiction editor Ron Charles, "It’s a wistful novel about how little we know of one another, but how eager we are to tape together a collage of rumors, assumptions and fantasies to answer questions we’re too young, too cowardly or too polite to ask." The novelist Jennifer Gilmore in the Times: "One of the most impressive aspects of The Fates Will Find Their Way is how it summons up the elements of a suburban youth, with each image reinforcing the idea that danger has a different meaning for the young."
Pick up tomorrow’s C-VILLE for a full review. Pittard reads at the Barracks Road Barnes & Noble on Monday, February 7.
Read anything good lately?