A review by isabelh27
Beneficence by Meredith Hall

5.0

Written for Cursor Literary application:
 
Simple, elegant writing brings to life the individuals in the Senter family, living a largely self-contained life in rural Maine in the 1950s. After a devastating loss, each family member spins away from the connective tissue of their farm, losing one another and themselves in individually held grief before coming back together. I had initially borrowed Beneficence from a library, but almost immediately purchased a copy so that I could write in it, underlining the most poignant of Hall’s beautifully stark descriptions of heartache, anger, forgiveness, and love.