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A review by casskrug
The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya
4.5
thank you to pantheon and netgalley for allowing me to read this early!
jo hamya i was unfamiliar with your game. three rooms was a disappointment for me last year; i loved the description but not the execution. happy to say that i loved this book! i love when an author proves me wrong!
the hypocrite centers around sophia, a 20-something playwright, and her father, a successful novelist who divorced from sophia’s mother when she was young. the book is split up into acts, like a play, and follows a few different threads simultaneously:
1. sophia’s father being absolutely blindsided by the play that sophia wrote about a vacation they had taken together 10 years earlier
2. sophia and her mother having lunch together while they wait for her father to finish watching the play, which skewers his behavior on said vacation
3. flashbacks of the vacation, where sophia’s father had her transcribe his novel and allowed her to embark on some uncomfortable adventures with a boy
hamya said in an interview that with this book, she wanted to try her hand at writing “one massive gray area” and i think she definitely succeeded. both characters get their feelings hurt and hurt each other, and the reader has to sort through the thoughts and actions of each. it’s hard to say that one person is completely in the right and the other is completely in the wrong. sophia was uncomfortable with being forced into helping her father work on his novel, which she felt was full of outdated ideas. sophia’s father is uncomfortable with her play, which portrays him as a condescending womanizer who was brazen about bringing random women back to the vacation home that he was sharing with his daughter.
the thing that really blew me away with the hypocrite was the writing style. it was descriptive and atmospheric, with moments of poetic stream-of consciousness. hamya’s descriptions of the sicilian island makes this a perfect summertime read, and the complexity of the characters’ emotions are rendered in a very raw way. it was propulsive and just a kind of writing that really clicked with me, which i didn’t get with three rooms.
this book is being compared to rachel cusk, which i can see due to the clashes between generations and gender, and themes of creating art. it’s also being compared to deborah levy, and i did get hot milk vibes with the fraught family relationships and the setting. i’d also say it’s for fans of daughter by claudia dey, due to the similar family dynamics and inclusion of the theater. ultimately though, the structure and style of the book stands out to me as being quite unique.
jo hamya i was unfamiliar with your game. three rooms was a disappointment for me last year; i loved the description but not the execution. happy to say that i loved this book! i love when an author proves me wrong!
the hypocrite centers around sophia, a 20-something playwright, and her father, a successful novelist who divorced from sophia’s mother when she was young. the book is split up into acts, like a play, and follows a few different threads simultaneously:
1. sophia’s father being absolutely blindsided by the play that sophia wrote about a vacation they had taken together 10 years earlier
2. sophia and her mother having lunch together while they wait for her father to finish watching the play, which skewers his behavior on said vacation
3. flashbacks of the vacation, where sophia’s father had her transcribe his novel and allowed her to embark on some uncomfortable adventures with a boy
hamya said in an interview that with this book, she wanted to try her hand at writing “one massive gray area” and i think she definitely succeeded. both characters get their feelings hurt and hurt each other, and the reader has to sort through the thoughts and actions of each. it’s hard to say that one person is completely in the right and the other is completely in the wrong. sophia was uncomfortable with being forced into helping her father work on his novel, which she felt was full of outdated ideas. sophia’s father is uncomfortable with her play, which portrays him as a condescending womanizer who was brazen about bringing random women back to the vacation home that he was sharing with his daughter.
the thing that really blew me away with the hypocrite was the writing style. it was descriptive and atmospheric, with moments of poetic stream-of consciousness. hamya’s descriptions of the sicilian island makes this a perfect summertime read, and the complexity of the characters’ emotions are rendered in a very raw way. it was propulsive and just a kind of writing that really clicked with me, which i didn’t get with three rooms.
this book is being compared to rachel cusk, which i can see due to the clashes between generations and gender, and themes of creating art. it’s also being compared to deborah levy, and i did get hot milk vibes with the fraught family relationships and the setting. i’d also say it’s for fans of daughter by claudia dey, due to the similar family dynamics and inclusion of the theater. ultimately though, the structure and style of the book stands out to me as being quite unique.