A review by travisclau
Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

3.0

A novel that resonates with so many gothic novels before it -- you can hear Brockden Brown's Wieland through the figures of The Father and Mr. Bell. It self-consciously plays with the tropes of the ghostly supernatural, cultish religiosity with a kind of humor that is perversely dry. Its absurdity in both plot and dialogue work precisely because Hunt knows her genre and its countless permutations. I was taken most by the novel's "split form" of tracking two female characters from two different generations. It is haunting to see the parallels between Cora and Ruth, bound not only by blood but by similar trauma. The novel resists resolution in the ways we might want it, but as the novel itself demonstrates, the complex relationships between mothers and daughters don't tie up as easily as we might want them to. The deus ex machina endings of typical gothic novels just doesn't work here: “I’m not getting anywhere. No start, middle, or end.”