The Saskiad, Brian Hall
The Saskiad, Brian Hall
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The Saskiad

Author: Brian Hall

Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld

Unabridged: 12 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 02/23/2021

Synopsis

"A novel wise in the complexities of adolescence and the human heart." --The Washington Post

Longing to escape the rundown commune outside of Ithaca, New York where she lives with her organic-farmer mother, assorted half-siblings, and a cow named Marilyn, the precociously well-read Saskia White, twelve, imagines herself as the noble contemporary of Odysseus, Marco Polo, and Horatio Hornblower. But Saskia's elaborate fantasies are soon upstaged by her real-life, long-lost father, who leads Saskia and her best friend Jane on a camping trip that turns into an epic adventure of love, sex, and lies.

Saskia is as unforgettable as her own heroes, a young girl whose story resonates with a rare and joyous sense of life and discovery.

About The Author

Brian Hall is the author of the novels The Dreamers, The Saskiad, Fall of Frost, and the forthcoming The Stone Loves the World, in addition to three works of nonfiction, including The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia and Madeleine's World. His journalism has appeared in publications such as Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by John

This is a novel that's all about story, which is as you might expect for a tale that bears so many subtle homages (most of which I through ignorance missed) to The Iliad. In the early chapters of the novel our 12-year-old heroine, Saskia -- growing up in what remains of a Long Island commune, presid......more

Goodreads review by saadia k

This is one strange book. Absurd at times, pretentious throughout, great in theory and horrifying in reality. I couldn't stop envisioning Brian Hall (the author) writing the prose of 12-, 13-, and 14-year-old sexual awakenings (ever-present, might I add), particularly the parts wherein they intersec......more

Goodreads review by Dennis

I think what I liked best about this book is the feeling of awkwardness that the protagonist feels about everything - her parents and best friend, especially - and this sense that she's so completely out of it. It's not funny, it's touching and real, something I could identify with. ("Everybody else......more

Goodreads review by Grace

I had to force myself to finish this because Hall created in Thomas one of the most loathsome characters in anything I've read recently (part of why I finished it was also that I hoped something terrible would happen to Thomas), but my extreme hatred of T. is a testament to Hall's writing. I was dis......more

Quotes

Praise for The Saskiad:

“A continual delight . . . exhilarating ambition and inventiveness, an American book of wonders.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Beautiful . . . Saskia speaks in a pastiche of received languages, most of them—like the shards of the Odyssey that crop up everywhere—grandiose, stilted, and unexpectedly lovely.” —The New Yorker

“Some books open at the touch like an enchanted door. So it is with The Saskiad, [an] inspired coming-of-age story.” —The Washington Post 

“Richly imagined . . . lyrical and compelling.” —The Los Angeles Times

“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

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