THE SASKIAD
“Hall has given wonderful new dimensions to the traditional coming-of-age story. . . . With each surprising turn of plot, The Saskiad seems to draw on new reserves of imaginative energy, and its heroine’s bedrock honesty and freshness of perception make her story a continual delight.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“You must meet Saskia, the subversive twelve-year-old who reads Homer, milks cows, talks with Kublai Khan, and may be the most intriguing fictional adolescent since Holden Caulfield. In spare, fresh prose, Brian Hall has captured that terrible, magical time when the advance to adulthood and retreat into childish imagination both beckon, equally perilous and thrilling.”
—Geraldine Brooks
“Hall has contributed something new to a well-worn genre. . . . The Saskiad is mythic and ordinary, wise and adolescent, knowing and innocent.”
—Beverly Langer, San Francisco Chronicle
“Spectacularly inventive . . . [The Saskiad] uses the legacy of one generation to examine the power of history and the lure of the myths that shape us all.”
—Glamour
“The Saskiad manages, magically, to attain mythic grandeur while remaining entirely true to its contemporary premise, simultaneously an adventure and a psychological portrait, simultaneously vast and meticulously, beautifully detailed and observed. The key to this breathtaking balancing act is Hall’s passionate imagining of the inner life of his extraordinary protagonist; her coming-of-age is charted unsentimentally, with real insight, compassion, and wit.”
—Tony Kushner
“Absorbing . . . Few writers could conjure up Hall’s maze of myth, literary reference, and realism. In the architectural league of Joyce and Barth, The Saskiad is a masterwork.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Fanciful and splendidly entertaining . . . In creating a superintelligent, funny, eccentric yet believable child through whose eyes and imagination almost everything is presented, Brian Hall is reminiscent less of Homer or Joyce than Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll and perhaps, here and there, the Nabokov of Lolita.”
—Robert Kiely, The Boston Book Review
“As I read The Saskiad, I kept wishing that Brian Hall had written it when I was twelve years old. I would have devoured it with great enthusiasm then and read it three or four times a year until I was ninety-nine. I just keep wondering how Hall has managed to write a coming-of-age novel that feels so original, a contemporary tale that rings with such classical music, and a serious work that is so dang funny.”
—Sherman Alexie
“Hall is a craftsman of undeniable verve, his language soaring on imaginative wings.”
—The Sunday Times (London)
“Saskia is the genuine thing—a child who seems like a child instead of a vessel for the author’s grievances or an icky-sticky example of misbegotten adult sentiment—and readers will cheer her all the way.”
—Library Journal
“A delightful coming-of-age novel—part Barth, part Millhauser—richly detailing one girl’s fantastic search for her place in her own epic history.”
—Stewart O’Nan
“Hall’s cast of characters is very precisely drawn, but most remarkable is his portrait of Saskia. Part child, part alert young woman, she is entirely believable, and her narrative, slyly observant, filled with references to her beloved books, unblinking in its depiction of adult foibles, is compelling.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“With this complex novel, Hall explores the dark side of the utopian ideal and tells an old, old story in utterly contemporary terms. Filled with passion and narrative drive, Hall’s epic novel is simply riveting.”
—Booklist
“Thanks to his clear delight in language and his genuine sympathy for his brilliant young protagonist, The Saskiad is a great adventure.”
—Boston Magazine