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Hothouse Bloom
In the vein of Rachel Cusk, Han Kang, and Clarice Lispector, Hothouse Bloom follows a young woman who renounces her painting career and all her human relationships to become one with her late grandfather’s apple orchard.
Anna arrives at the orchard with the intention to abjure social life, deverbalize her experience, and adjust her consciousness to the rhythms of the trees. She succeeds, for a time, until the arrival of her old friend Jan, nomadic and lively and at work on a book about the painter Charles Burchfield. Alarmed by her isolation and declining health, he tries to get her painting again, while Anna is determined to show him the orchard as she sees it.
As the harvest approaches, the outside world descends in the form of pickers, contractors, neighbors, and pomologists. Anna realizes that the only way back to her idyllic life is to turn a profit. It becomes an obsession, much like her former in the way it consumes her, the way an apple oxidizes, might rot.
Hothouse Bloom is a millennial pastoral, both painterly and critical in its ideas about art, permaculture, subjectivity, and the natural world.
Anna arrives at the orchard with the intention to abjure social life, deverbalize her experience, and adjust her consciousness to the rhythms of the trees. She succeeds, for a time, until the arrival of her old friend Jan, nomadic and lively and at work on a book about the painter Charles Burchfield. Alarmed by her isolation and declining health, he tries to get her painting again, while Anna is determined to show him the orchard as she sees it.
As the harvest approaches, the outside world descends in the form of pickers, contractors, neighbors, and pomologists. Anna realizes that the only way back to her idyllic life is to turn a profit. It becomes an obsession, much like her former in the way it consumes her, the way an apple oxidizes, might rot.
Hothouse Bloom is a millennial pastoral, both painterly and critical in its ideas about art, permaculture, subjectivity, and the natural world.
210 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2025
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February 14, 2026
Shortlisted for the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and Canada
Hothouse Bloom is the debut novel by Austyn Wohlers and is published by Hub City Press (see below).
The novel centres around the character of Anna. A young woman and a painter, although an unsuccessful and seemingly unambitious one, see inherits an apple farm from her grandfather, Joe, who, estranged from his daughter and her mother, she had had relatively little recent contact.
Rather than sell the property, she decides to move there, hoping to achieve through a pastoral ideal what she couldn't through her art, putting away her painting materials but looks at the orchard with an artist's eye:
For now she was looking at the hot-looking light falling thickly on the ground like wax. Sunshine was wrapping itself around the trees and the buildings, assuming the shape of objects. Here she could grow roots, she who had always been rootless. Abjure her fellow man, she who had been abjured. Prolong time by entering a world of timelessness, or at least one where time passed on a different scale. As if she herself were surrounded in those thick sheets of light, the shadow of the failed life dissipated. Here she could hide her nothingness from the world, her shame. It was simply something that had happened, and was now over.
When a couchsurfing friend Jan comes to visit he ends up staying for a few months, helping with the harvest but also working on a monograph on the work of the artist Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), whose 1920 Apple Orchard (Orchard in Spring; Decrepitude in Springtime) is pictured below:
Although Jan's preference is for his later, more passionate and hallucinatory renditions of nature such as Autumn to Winter, 1964–66, which hint at how Jan views Anna's situation.
In Jan's view (at this stage relayed through his actions and words, not his narrative perspective) is that Anna is languishing at the farm and he is concerned about her isolation, her health and her seeming lack of ambition for either her art or the property. A neighbouring couple - Gil (close to her grandfather and as idealistic about his sheep as Joe was about his apples) and Tarama (highly practical and pragmatic) also influence the course of events.
And as the novel progresses, Anna's ideals and pastoral vision encounters the commercial realities of her inheritance: fireblight and other infections in the trees; structural decay in the neglected buildings; competition at the local farmer's market; and the need to advertise the business. And, perhaps the event that most triggers her to confront the reality that a strip of surburban shops are a few miles away and she does not live in an isolated idyll, when her beloved dogs, gifted by Gil and Tamara to protect her farm, themselves attack her wildfowl.
At the same time, the narrative perspective shifts from Anna's close third person perspective, into that of the others, something which I found unsatisfactory when reading, although made more sense when in authorial interviews Wohlers called this out as a deliberate effect, based on the work of Lispector and others (here Minor Literatures):
Wohlers also has said that she had at one stage planned the novel to end with Anna's death, but I would agree that the actual end - Anna visits a Macdonalds for a cheeseburger and fries - is a more effective one.
A book I wanted to appreciate more than I was able to do so - a book that I think would have been better read, uninterrupted, on a rural retreat than, between emais, on a city commute. And I preferred another apple farm based novel entered for the UK & Ireland sister prize, the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize, Kyra Wilder's Gloss. 3.5 stars rounded to 4 as I think the novel deserved more attention than I had to give it.
Hub City Press
Founded in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1995, Hub City Press is the South’s premier independent literary press.
Focused on finding and spotlighting extraordinary new and unsung writers from the American South, our curated list champions diverse authors and books that don’t fit into the commercial publishing landscape. The press has published over ninety high-caliber literary works, including novels, short stories, poetry, memoir, and books emphasizing the region's culture and history. Hub City is interested in books with a strong sense of place and is committed to introducing a diverse roster of lesser-heard Southern voices. We believe strongly that the publishing industry needs to promote a more diverse range of experiences, and so have committed ourselves to spotlighting lesser-heard Southern voices including: people of color, members of LGBTQ and gender diverse communities, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, as well as ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.
Hothouse Bloom is the debut novel by Austyn Wohlers and is published by Hub City Press (see below).
The novel centres around the character of Anna. A young woman and a painter, although an unsuccessful and seemingly unambitious one, see inherits an apple farm from her grandfather, Joe, who, estranged from his daughter and her mother, she had had relatively little recent contact.
Rather than sell the property, she decides to move there, hoping to achieve through a pastoral ideal what she couldn't through her art, putting away her painting materials but looks at the orchard with an artist's eye:
For now she was looking at the hot-looking light falling thickly on the ground like wax. Sunshine was wrapping itself around the trees and the buildings, assuming the shape of objects. Here she could grow roots, she who had always been rootless. Abjure her fellow man, she who had been abjured. Prolong time by entering a world of timelessness, or at least one where time passed on a different scale. As if she herself were surrounded in those thick sheets of light, the shadow of the failed life dissipated. Here she could hide her nothingness from the world, her shame. It was simply something that had happened, and was now over.
When a couchsurfing friend Jan comes to visit he ends up staying for a few months, helping with the harvest but also working on a monograph on the work of the artist Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), whose 1920 Apple Orchard (Orchard in Spring; Decrepitude in Springtime) is pictured below:
Although Jan's preference is for his later, more passionate and hallucinatory renditions of nature such as Autumn to Winter, 1964–66, which hint at how Jan views Anna's situation.
In Jan's view (at this stage relayed through his actions and words, not his narrative perspective) is that Anna is languishing at the farm and he is concerned about her isolation, her health and her seeming lack of ambition for either her art or the property. A neighbouring couple - Gil (close to her grandfather and as idealistic about his sheep as Joe was about his apples) and Tarama (highly practical and pragmatic) also influence the course of events.
And as the novel progresses, Anna's ideals and pastoral vision encounters the commercial realities of her inheritance: fireblight and other infections in the trees; structural decay in the neglected buildings; competition at the local farmer's market; and the need to advertise the business. And, perhaps the event that most triggers her to confront the reality that a strip of surburban shops are a few miles away and she does not live in an isolated idyll, when her beloved dogs, gifted by Gil and Tamara to protect her farm, themselves attack her wildfowl.
At the same time, the narrative perspective shifts from Anna's close third person perspective, into that of the others, something which I found unsatisfactory when reading, although made more sense when in authorial interviews Wohlers called this out as a deliberate effect, based on the work of Lispector and others (here Minor Literatures):
I really like novels and stories that give you someone’s really intense psychology, and then make them die abruptly. You have this perspective shift at the end where someone else is watching their death or experiencing their death. And I think that even though Anna’s death didn’t make it into the novel in the end, you do get the other perspectives coming in late in the novel, and that was related to the idea as a form. It’s the death of her consciousness as the thing that the reader is trapped with.
Wohlers also has said that she had at one stage planned the novel to end with Anna's death, but I would agree that the actual end - Anna visits a Macdonalds for a cheeseburger and fries - is a more effective one.
A book I wanted to appreciate more than I was able to do so - a book that I think would have been better read, uninterrupted, on a rural retreat than, between emais, on a city commute. And I preferred another apple farm based novel entered for the UK & Ireland sister prize, the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize, Kyra Wilder's Gloss. 3.5 stars rounded to 4 as I think the novel deserved more attention than I had to give it.
Hub City Press
Founded in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1995, Hub City Press is the South’s premier independent literary press.
Focused on finding and spotlighting extraordinary new and unsung writers from the American South, our curated list champions diverse authors and books that don’t fit into the commercial publishing landscape. The press has published over ninety high-caliber literary works, including novels, short stories, poetry, memoir, and books emphasizing the region's culture and history. Hub City is interested in books with a strong sense of place and is committed to introducing a diverse roster of lesser-heard Southern voices. We believe strongly that the publishing industry needs to promote a more diverse range of experiences, and so have committed ourselves to spotlighting lesser-heard Southern voices including: people of color, members of LGBTQ and gender diverse communities, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, as well as ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.
September 7, 2025
This isn’t a fast paced read. There is a constant air of malaise throughout the novel that could be difficult for some readers but, to me, added to the allure. Austyn Wohlers has perfectly captured the yearning desire to detach from reality and become consumed by an idillic landscape… Her protagonist, Anna, willingly loses herself to an inherited apple orchard only to find out it may not be the garden of Eden she was hoping for. This book reads like a surrealist painting: somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness.
September 1, 2025
Kind of the ultimate “whenever you go, there you are” novel. Tore through this book in two days because it’s a real confluence of my interests: painting, agriculture, and dramatically disappearing to be alone even at great personal cost.
I don’t think this book is for everyone, but if it’s for you I think it’s really worth a weekend. Going to the store now to buy a bunch of apples.
Also, just a note, but Hub City Press continues to deliver excellent and interesting books. Everything I’ve picked up from them over the past couple of years has been well worth my time.
I don’t think this book is for everyone, but if it’s for you I think it’s really worth a weekend. Going to the store now to buy a bunch of apples.
Also, just a note, but Hub City Press continues to deliver excellent and interesting books. Everything I’ve picked up from them over the past couple of years has been well worth my time.
March 5, 2026
This novel is shortlisted for the 2026 Republic of Consciousness USA/CAN, a prize dedicated to small presses. I am trying to read all 5 works on the short list before the winner is announced next week.
So far this is my favorite on the list. It is my favorite mixture of interesting but partly surreal story with a great sense of place. The story of a young woman inheriting her grandfather's apple orchard and her attempts both to make it successfully produce a crop, along with her joining with the orchard in a cerebral and almost magical way. The orchard is definitely one of the main "characters" in the story.
I must admit that my love of apples plays a big part in my enjoyment of the book and I dare anyone not to sense the smell and taste of the fruit while reading! 5*
So far this is my favorite on the list. It is my favorite mixture of interesting but partly surreal story with a great sense of place. The story of a young woman inheriting her grandfather's apple orchard and her attempts both to make it successfully produce a crop, along with her joining with the orchard in a cerebral and almost magical way. The orchard is definitely one of the main "characters" in the story.
I must admit that my love of apples plays a big part in my enjoyment of the book and I dare anyone not to sense the smell and taste of the fruit while reading! 5*
Read
October 4, 2025DNF. Unfortunately not for me. Blurbs promised Lispector vibes, but stopping somewhere in the middle, I have to 'say' I fully disagree with that. To me, it didn't have any Han Kang or Lispector vibes at all.
Read
April 17, 2026The novel did not do what I wanted it to do. Instead of a Deleuzian becoming-plant, I got selling apples at a market. I felt horribly let down, to say the least.
March 24, 2026
I read this because it was shortlisted for the 2025 US/Canada Republic of Consciousness Small Press Prize (submitted by Hub City Press, thereby already fulfilling part of the prize's mission by introducing me to a new press).
But life seldom adheres to our plans, now does it? What follows is a slim, introspective tale where nature and reality provide both insight and challenge to Anna as she realizes what it takes to both manage and maintain an orchard. Despite her best efforts, other people inevitably (and quickly) invade her new life whether that be the neighbors who frequently visited with her grandfather or her longtime friend Jan who needs a place to crash and seems dedicated to convincing her this new life is not what she wants/needs.
It's an odd story whose tension and struggle came to life on the page, but whose pace and culmination felt somewhat incongruous.
------------------------------------------
My ranking of the 2025 US/Canada Republic of Consciousness nominees:
(Updated 7/17/26 after finally finishing the shortlist)
1) The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje, translated by David McKay (New Vessel Press)
2) On Earth As It Is Beneath, by Ana Paula Maia, translated by Padma Viswanathan (Charco Press)
3) The Endless Week, by Laura Vazquez, translated by Alex Niemi (Dorothy, a publishing project)
4) Hothouse Bloom, by Austyn Wohlers (Hub City Press)
5) Little Lazarus, by Michael Bible (CLASH Books)
6) Dreaming of Dead People, by Rosalind Belben (And Other Stories)
"Long before anything “went wrong” the idea of flight had been within her. She had always felt the rituals of life did not make sense. She was afraid of making wrong decisions and therefore afraid of life itself. Everything that happened felt abstractedly wrong: whenever the world commanded here to do something she would think “why should I” not out of rebellion but despair."Wohlers's debut novel introduces us to Anna, a former painter who has discarded her old life to take over an apple orchard she inherited from her grandfather after his death. She hopes this change of life will lead to isolation, which will provide her with a peaceful grounding life has not previously offered.
But life seldom adheres to our plans, now does it? What follows is a slim, introspective tale where nature and reality provide both insight and challenge to Anna as she realizes what it takes to both manage and maintain an orchard. Despite her best efforts, other people inevitably (and quickly) invade her new life whether that be the neighbors who frequently visited with her grandfather or her longtime friend Jan who needs a place to crash and seems dedicated to convincing her this new life is not what she wants/needs.
It's an odd story whose tension and struggle came to life on the page, but whose pace and culmination felt somewhat incongruous.
------------------------------------------
My ranking of the 2025 US/Canada Republic of Consciousness nominees:
(Updated 7/17/26 after finally finishing the shortlist)
1) The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje, translated by David McKay (New Vessel Press)
2) On Earth As It Is Beneath, by Ana Paula Maia, translated by Padma Viswanathan (Charco Press)
3) The Endless Week, by Laura Vazquez, translated by Alex Niemi (Dorothy, a publishing project)
4) Hothouse Bloom, by Austyn Wohlers (Hub City Press)
5) Little Lazarus, by Michael Bible (CLASH Books)
6) Dreaming of Dead People, by Rosalind Belben (And Other Stories)
Read
January 26, 2026Shortlisted for the 2026 RoC US/Canada Prize
"Here it is not a question of death as the extinction of life, but of death-in-life, death with all the substance and power of life. The human being is dead and no more than a ritual of capital."
—Jacques Camatte
*
She was always trying to prolong the hours into all sixty of their gradient minutes, and to stretch the minutes into the full halo of their sixty seconds. To expand her understanding of a single instant out into infinitude.
She wanted to coat each one with the secret heart of things, with a kind of vitality that came from somewhere beyond her, so she could someday say that she had lived a rich life full of affect. Yet she was always envying those to whom things simply happened. (2-3)
*
A little loneliness is a small price to pay for absolute stillness, absolute peace. (93)
*
She felt disoriented...
She realized she was in a lot of pain. She closed her eyes. Because this was my way of trying to be in the world, because I never felt right in the world except when painting over my field of vision... blue, blue, blue. I wanted to see and not be seen. It was the one thing that made me feel like I wasn't dying.
But I do still feel like dying, she thought slowly.
Right now. I want to be nobody and a painter is somebody.
She opened her eyes and looked at the painting.
I want to see things in a way that's impossible...
I want the most primordial, essential vision...it feels impossible to forget, even in a place like this, because that little gray stroke doesn't look like nothing anymore. It was supposed to be an anonymous branch and it looks like the dead gray arm of a person, a lover or an enemy. Or the barrel of the gun in my attic.
After all, a painting is a thing of the world. What am I supposed to do once it's in the world?
(188)
______
absolutely gorgeous writing, thick & slow-paced. can definitely see why this author is compared to three heavy hitters—Rachel Cusk, Han Kang, & Clarice Lispector—in the blurb!! (these quotes might not capture it, only pulled as they resonated personally, but the vibe of the whole book is incredible.)
grateful to the RoC prize for the introduction to books (& small presses! Hub City’s focus on southern writing looks amazing & definitely want to see more of what they publish!) that I otherwise might have missed.
*
2026 RofC US/Canada Prize
personal rankings; shortlisted books are numbered
1. The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje (tr. David McKay)
2. The Endless Week, Laura Vázquez (tr. Alex Niemi)
3. Little Lazarus, Michael Bible
4. Hothouse Bloom, Austyn Wohlers
—On Earth As It Is Beneath, Ana Paula Maia (tr. Padma Viswanathan)
—Small Scale Sinners, Mahreen Sohail
—Little World, Josephine Rowe
—Iris & the Dead, Miranda Schreiber
5. Dreaming of Dead People, Rosalind Belben
—Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, Sarah Yahm
[10/10 & completed!]
"Here it is not a question of death as the extinction of life, but of death-in-life, death with all the substance and power of life. The human being is dead and no more than a ritual of capital."
—Jacques Camatte
*
She was always trying to prolong the hours into all sixty of their gradient minutes, and to stretch the minutes into the full halo of their sixty seconds. To expand her understanding of a single instant out into infinitude.
She wanted to coat each one with the secret heart of things, with a kind of vitality that came from somewhere beyond her, so she could someday say that she had lived a rich life full of affect. Yet she was always envying those to whom things simply happened. (2-3)
*
A little loneliness is a small price to pay for absolute stillness, absolute peace. (93)
*
She felt disoriented...
She realized she was in a lot of pain. She closed her eyes. Because this was my way of trying to be in the world, because I never felt right in the world except when painting over my field of vision... blue, blue, blue. I wanted to see and not be seen. It was the one thing that made me feel like I wasn't dying.
But I do still feel like dying, she thought slowly.
Right now. I want to be nobody and a painter is somebody.
She opened her eyes and looked at the painting.
I want to see things in a way that's impossible...
I want the most primordial, essential vision...it feels impossible to forget, even in a place like this, because that little gray stroke doesn't look like nothing anymore. It was supposed to be an anonymous branch and it looks like the dead gray arm of a person, a lover or an enemy. Or the barrel of the gun in my attic.
After all, a painting is a thing of the world. What am I supposed to do once it's in the world?
(188)
______
absolutely gorgeous writing, thick & slow-paced. can definitely see why this author is compared to three heavy hitters—Rachel Cusk, Han Kang, & Clarice Lispector—in the blurb!! (these quotes might not capture it, only pulled as they resonated personally, but the vibe of the whole book is incredible.)
grateful to the RoC prize for the introduction to books (& small presses! Hub City’s focus on southern writing looks amazing & definitely want to see more of what they publish!) that I otherwise might have missed.
*
2026 RofC US/Canada Prize
personal rankings; shortlisted books are numbered
1. The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje (tr. David McKay)
2. The Endless Week, Laura Vázquez (tr. Alex Niemi)
3. Little Lazarus, Michael Bible
4. Hothouse Bloom, Austyn Wohlers
—On Earth As It Is Beneath, Ana Paula Maia (tr. Padma Viswanathan)
—Small Scale Sinners, Mahreen Sohail
—Little World, Josephine Rowe
—Iris & the Dead, Miranda Schreiber
5. Dreaming of Dead People, Rosalind Belben
—Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, Sarah Yahm
[10/10 & completed!]
September 26, 2025
a delirious exploration of a failed ascetic attempting to wash away her failures by living in a constant present ignorant of past, future, and the contemporaneous world
January 22, 2026
4 /5 stars -
This is one of those reads where if you get it, you get it - and if you don't, you don't.
This is one of those reads where if you get it, you get it - and if you don't, you don't.
December 22, 2025
giving this a 5 because i want more people to read it. it’s surreal & also (deliberately?) noncathartic … very rich with symbolism and metaphor and archetype. my favorite kind of book, one that begs to be discussed
July 11, 2026
Ugh i wanted to love this book so bad. The premise really spoke to me as i too have a yearn to escape to an orchard and live the rest of my days in peace. However, the message, to me, fell a bit flat. It seemed like a long winded way of saying 'no matter where you go, there you are.' Or 'there capitalism is?' I dont know.... im MAD because it really was speaking to my soul at first (i UNDERLINED and ANNOTATED), but it lost me in the end :(.i will say the novel was significantly more enjoyable when it was soundtracked by my Spotify grief mix, which, unironically, felt like a theme of the book. The whole time it seems like Anna is grieving something that never existed... an ideal that was just that in the end. 3 stars because i do feel like it taught me something about the implication of yearning and putting a lot of pressure on something that doesn't and may never truly exist in reality.
May 19, 2025
I found Hothouse Bloom utterly captivating. I simply couldn’t put it down. Wohlers’s writing made Anna’s orchard so vivid that I can see it clearly whenever I close my eyes. The inclusion of the bear was a particularly clever touch, adding a sense of unpredictability that kept me on edge and eager to read more. For most of the novel, we experience the world through Anna’s perspective, but in the final quarter, Wohlers shifts to Jan’s point of view. His raw, unfiltered thoughts about Anna hit like a punch to the gut, powerfully reminding the reader that this is a novel about perception as much as isolation or ambition. I also loved the decision to end the novel at a McDonald’s; a stark, almost jarring contrast to the pastoral solitude of the orchard. It brilliantly symbolizes Anna’s reentry into the everyday, commercial world she had tried so hard to escape. Overall, Wohlers masterfully explores the boundaries between self and society, art and survival, and perception and reality.
October 23, 2025
was really intrigued by the story idea, and the writing and space was so immersive (and a beautiful book cover as well). But the story and writing lost me a bit in the last 50 pages with the shifts to the new perspectives and so many loose threads left unvisited and unresolved. The book was short, so it would have been interesting to have another 50 pages maybe with a few of those things tied up
October 24, 2025
so close to being a fave but the literal last word was such a letdown. & in general the perspective shifts in the last ~1/3 interrupted my suspension of disbelief… there could have been a way to concretize things without being so obvious about it
August 30, 2025
You have such a unique voice, and I really admire the way you were able to make every page so engaging. Honestly, it’s one of those books that stays with you long after reading.
March 13, 2026
This was one of the 5 books on the short list for the 2025 (awarded in 2026) RoC of US/CA short list. This prize is given to a book published by a small independent press in the US or Canada.
I thought this book was quite well done. The main character Anna has given up her life - her longterm boyfriend and painting - to move to the orchard her grandfather left her. She barely remembers her grandfather, but he remembered her, speaking highly of her and her painting to his neighbor Gil. Her recollection of him is formed by her mother who was estranged from him when he died. Anna's mother does not understand why she has chosen to keep the orchard. In fact, no one understands why Anna is attempting to operate the orchard. Anna thinks she does and thinks she is bonding with it, at least for a time. Then she lets a friend, a guy named Jan come and stay. In exchange for the room, he helps on the farm while working on his biography of a painter who is one that Anna admires but who was never particularly well known. Jan thinks Anna needs to capitalize the farm. He thinks she looks terrible -- very thin. Jan thinks she's reaching her goal of bonding and wonders why Jan doesn't understand why it's important.
Jan seems as disconnected to reality as Anna is. He hasn't had a job in ages and freeloads off his friends. After a very bad harvest, Anna does take Jan's advice to make and sell cider. She realizes she will soon be out of money to run the farm and needs cash to pay the bills. But she really just wants to be one with the orchard. She tells Jan he has to leave, believing he is hindering her from her goal but then he convinces her to let him bring some friends over under the pretense that they will purchase something - they don't, but they do have a wild party.
This is pretty dark. Neither Anna nor Jan is ever going to achieve what they desire, whatever it is. I thought it well done.
I thought this book was quite well done. The main character Anna has given up her life - her longterm boyfriend and painting - to move to the orchard her grandfather left her. She barely remembers her grandfather, but he remembered her, speaking highly of her and her painting to his neighbor Gil. Her recollection of him is formed by her mother who was estranged from him when he died. Anna's mother does not understand why she has chosen to keep the orchard. In fact, no one understands why Anna is attempting to operate the orchard. Anna thinks she does and thinks she is bonding with it, at least for a time. Then she lets a friend, a guy named Jan come and stay. In exchange for the room, he helps on the farm while working on his biography of a painter who is one that Anna admires but who was never particularly well known. Jan thinks Anna needs to capitalize the farm. He thinks she looks terrible -- very thin. Jan thinks she's reaching her goal of bonding and wonders why Jan doesn't understand why it's important.
Jan seems as disconnected to reality as Anna is. He hasn't had a job in ages and freeloads off his friends. After a very bad harvest, Anna does take Jan's advice to make and sell cider. She realizes she will soon be out of money to run the farm and needs cash to pay the bills. But she really just wants to be one with the orchard. She tells Jan he has to leave, believing he is hindering her from her goal but then he convinces her to let him bring some friends over under the pretense that they will purchase something - they don't, but they do have a wild party.
This is pretty dark. Neither Anna nor Jan is ever going to achieve what they desire, whatever it is. I thought it well done.
November 12, 2025
"She was born for (and always seeking) a world of immense gentleness."
"She was always trying to prolong the hours into all sixty of their gradient minutes, and to stretch the minutes into the full halo of their sixty seconds."
Beautiful, dark, deep. We meet Anna, painter, lost creature, figuring out her life. She inherits an apple orchard, and we follow her journey as she wonders about her life, the meaning, and how she navigates the darkness within. So complex and relatable for those who seek solace in nature and being alone. Austyn Wohlers, an artist indeed. Life is more than living in the most grandeur moments. But also sitting in the mundane, picking the rotten apples, wandering the paths that surround us without thought. Definitely thought-provoking.
"She was always trying to prolong the hours into all sixty of their gradient minutes, and to stretch the minutes into the full halo of their sixty seconds."
Beautiful, dark, deep. We meet Anna, painter, lost creature, figuring out her life. She inherits an apple orchard, and we follow her journey as she wonders about her life, the meaning, and how she navigates the darkness within. So complex and relatable for those who seek solace in nature and being alone. Austyn Wohlers, an artist indeed. Life is more than living in the most grandeur moments. But also sitting in the mundane, picking the rotten apples, wandering the paths that surround us without thought. Definitely thought-provoking.
October 30, 2026
Very strange but like in a good way…. i liked this but I can’t really put my finger on why
Did Not Finish
July 4, 2026Genuinely so bad
January 25, 2026
overwritten, pretentious and worst of all, boring
January 12, 2026
“What happened? Perhaps it is I who have impressed myself on them, not the other way around—I who have imbued myself, my coldness, my failure, my rot. There was a pleasure in that. I've deformed things. By being here I've ruined them”
June 29, 2026
The prose is beautiful and I felt fully engaged in the characters and story. The main character is unlikeable which I don't mind. I loved the themes of nature and the futile goal of escaping yourself. However as I was nearing the end I knew my overall opinion would hinge on the ending. Unfortunately, the ending was abrupt and inconclusive and I didn't feel like it managed to leave a strong impression on me. There were a few red herrings eluding to an explosive conclusion, but it was apparently a false alarm and after all of the beautiful prose and setup the book ends with . Also there were at least three typos which always take me out of a story for a few paragraphs afterwards. Maybe I should be an editor...
September 13, 2025
superb, contemplative, subversive, and honestly…funny!
December 4, 2025
Hothouse Bloom started off slow, I was able to get into it, and by the end I was just confused. Im not someone that requires my book to be action packed or anything, but I felt like I was waiting for something to happen that never did. I didn’t get a chance to really connect to any of the characters, especially Anna because the information was so limited, and there were a few holes that were never plugged up.
Some things made sense and I was fine with some of the showing instead of telling. Through Jan, I was able to put together that she was depressed and thats why she was trying to escape her past life. But I wish we knew a little more about why? What happened with her ex? What were her family dynamics like? What was she like prior to this? I don’t feel like i learned much beyond a couple of sentences.
I liked the underlying message. In trying to escape everyday life, thoughts, responsibilities, she put herself in a situation that was killing her and much more difficult to navigate. Giving up her life and painting hurt her more than facing whatever problems she was running from. I also liked the parallels between her and her grandfather. They both were trying to escape and he must have sensed that in her in the short time they spent together.
The ending fell so flat for me, it felt rushed and left me with more questions than answers.
Some things made sense and I was fine with some of the showing instead of telling. Through Jan, I was able to put together that she was depressed and thats why she was trying to escape her past life. But I wish we knew a little more about why? What happened with her ex? What were her family dynamics like? What was she like prior to this? I don’t feel like i learned much beyond a couple of sentences.
I liked the underlying message. In trying to escape everyday life, thoughts, responsibilities, she put herself in a situation that was killing her and much more difficult to navigate. Giving up her life and painting hurt her more than facing whatever problems she was running from. I also liked the parallels between her and her grandfather. They both were trying to escape and he must have sensed that in her in the short time they spent together.
The ending fell so flat for me, it felt rushed and left me with more questions than answers.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2025
Crammed to the gills with similes. If everything is like something else, what is the something else like? For a character trying so desperately to erase her human context by living in an orchard, she sure spent a lot of time tying every single thing to some other signifier.
December 18, 2025
maybe more like 4.25 - i was expecting it to be lower during the first half but the way the characterization twisted as the story went on was so interesting. this book contains a lot in terms of reflections on the way we engage with nature, as an escape, as a refuge, a release from the world, but a lot of times we ignore that it is a part of this world, it’s inescapable to live among people and among everything humans have created up to this point. we can’t shrink away from the world like anna wants to, even if we try so desperately. this makes me think a lot about classes i took in college where we discuss this perfect, untouched idea of “nature,” when in reality that has never really existed - even preserved land is maintained and manicured to human liking and needs. i almost hated anna by the end but also understood her desires while understanding that they would never be attainable, that she was killing herself by trying to become nature in spite of her humanity. i also think this is an allegory for people in many other ways trying to find an escape from the modern world only to realize you can’t remove yourself from it.
after reading some other reviews i think people had a lot of issues with the loose ends, but i kind of feel like that wasn’t really the point - jan was always intended to be a foil to anna and we saw a lot of their relationship reflected in gil and tamara as well. i’m not sure we are meant to understand their entire story, although it could’ve been helpful to learn a bit more. i feel like jan’s chapter from his perspective was well placed because it provided a lot of important context only after seeing the unraveling from her perspective, which i think is important to understanding how that can happen to a person without realizing.
after reading some other reviews i think people had a lot of issues with the loose ends, but i kind of feel like that wasn’t really the point - jan was always intended to be a foil to anna and we saw a lot of their relationship reflected in gil and tamara as well. i’m not sure we are meant to understand their entire story, although it could’ve been helpful to learn a bit more. i feel like jan’s chapter from his perspective was well placed because it provided a lot of important context only after seeing the unraveling from her perspective, which i think is important to understanding how that can happen to a person without realizing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 30, 2026
I love how every time I picked this book up, it fit whatever timeframe I was in. Picked it up in March, for Anna it's March too. Picked it up in May, the buds are in bloom for Anna as well... I loved that synchronicity. But there’s nothing fast paced about this novel what-so-ever. Expect constant malaise & abstract daydreams polluted by the incessantness of reality
Read in tandem, as a warm-up of sorts, with
"The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector. Like reading mother in order to prepare for her daughter. Which was truly helpful in the longer chapters that trudged a little bit.
They carry a similar abstract cognizance, but Wohlers here DOESN’T engage in ANY HUMOR & seems to want to indulge the mental unravelling that our MC Anna wants to endure. She wants to willingly “obliterate” her essential being, coming out the other side transcended into something earthly gravity can’t touch. Because earthly gravity was always just “too much weight for her.” Constantly fragile, but trying to maintain a facade of fortification.
Jan is exactly what this book needed. He encapsulates what l imagine blood that was once stagnant and has now been reinvigorated to feel like. He seems like my type of peeps, but I also get where she's coming from....
MF JUST LET ME LIVE MY LIFE THE WAY I WANT TO!!!! If she wants to obliterate, let her obliterate. Which is was he ends up doing because it’s impossible to help someone who doesn’t think they need help… from anyone…
There’s moments where you truly scrunch up your face and think “What is wrong with this bitch?!” Just let her perish out in the field the same way her grandfather did. Let them be two peas in a pod that never sprouted but were constantly dreaming of the sun, and it’s light, and it’s….
Read in tandem, as a warm-up of sorts, with
"The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector. Like reading mother in order to prepare for her daughter. Which was truly helpful in the longer chapters that trudged a little bit.
They carry a similar abstract cognizance, but Wohlers here DOESN’T engage in ANY HUMOR & seems to want to indulge the mental unravelling that our MC Anna wants to endure. She wants to willingly “obliterate” her essential being, coming out the other side transcended into something earthly gravity can’t touch. Because earthly gravity was always just “too much weight for her.” Constantly fragile, but trying to maintain a facade of fortification.
Jan is exactly what this book needed. He encapsulates what l imagine blood that was once stagnant and has now been reinvigorated to feel like. He seems like my type of peeps, but I also get where she's coming from....
MF JUST LET ME LIVE MY LIFE THE WAY I WANT TO!!!! If she wants to obliterate, let her obliterate. Which is was he ends up doing because it’s impossible to help someone who doesn’t think they need help… from anyone…
There’s moments where you truly scrunch up your face and think “What is wrong with this bitch?!” Just let her perish out in the field the same way her grandfather did. Let them be two peas in a pod that never sprouted but were constantly dreaming of the sun, and it’s light, and it’s….
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 16, 2026
"No great tragedy, people peter out. You annihilate the shameful parts of yourself, forget your failures, you’re born again. Besides, how horribly anyone had understood—as if her desire to make work had had anything to do with public success."
“And finally, coming home from their walks in the late light, she gathered the dandelion and chamomile that grew beside the cabin steps and the stinging nettle that lined the packing shed for an herbal tea. She mixed it with lemon and with honey from the glass jar the ants were always invading. (She scooped the ants out.) And after boiling the herbs in a kettle she would let a few of those limp chamomile blossoms float like water lilies in the brew, softly touching her lips as she sipped: the closest she would ever come again to romance.”
“There’s strength in persisting despite someone’s incorrect perception of you. The only kind of interpersonal perception there really is. Refracted, distorted by relations.”
“‘Maybe this place has changed you, or death has sobered you, or you’re just a serious property owner now.’”
see, i get the premise of this book, the generational inheritance to take on a land and project bigger than yourself in a world where nobody can afford land, nobody can afford to be an artist full-time. lots of rich color description and hyper detail when it came to describing inner thought in relationship to land, also it feels like i'm in a pattern of reading books about land, coyotes, and the sad realities of animals. i say this days after my father's dog ran away during a thunderstorm and the first night my mom and i went out to look for him, the spotlight surfaced directly onto a coyote who stared me straight in the eye :(
read for the inaugural book of burnaway's editorial open book club
“And finally, coming home from their walks in the late light, she gathered the dandelion and chamomile that grew beside the cabin steps and the stinging nettle that lined the packing shed for an herbal tea. She mixed it with lemon and with honey from the glass jar the ants were always invading. (She scooped the ants out.) And after boiling the herbs in a kettle she would let a few of those limp chamomile blossoms float like water lilies in the brew, softly touching her lips as she sipped: the closest she would ever come again to romance.”
“There’s strength in persisting despite someone’s incorrect perception of you. The only kind of interpersonal perception there really is. Refracted, distorted by relations.”
“‘Maybe this place has changed you, or death has sobered you, or you’re just a serious property owner now.’”
see, i get the premise of this book, the generational inheritance to take on a land and project bigger than yourself in a world where nobody can afford land, nobody can afford to be an artist full-time. lots of rich color description and hyper detail when it came to describing inner thought in relationship to land, also it feels like i'm in a pattern of reading books about land, coyotes, and the sad realities of animals. i say this days after my father's dog ran away during a thunderstorm and the first night my mom and i went out to look for him, the spotlight surfaced directly onto a coyote who stared me straight in the eye :(
read for the inaugural book of burnaway's editorial open book club
December 9, 2025
A young woman abandons her painting career to take over an orchard she inherits from her grandfather. As I’ve noted before, I’ve had amazingly good luck with novels with orchard settings, including novels by Ann Patchett, Eliza Minot, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Tracy Chevalier, Jane Hamilton, Amanda Coplin, Shelley Read, and Larry Watson. This one is good, but not in the same class as those, and it will have limited appeal because there's almost no action aside from changes in the type of work as the seasons change, and there's no ending; it just stops. Instead, it's highly introspective and mostly pretty melancholy; the novel takes place almost entirely inside Anna's mind as she struggles to understand her place in the world and to figure out whether human connections are necessary or even desirable. Oddly, for a book so tied to the land, the location is ambiguous; all we know is that it's near a university town in a place with hills. (We also learn in passing at one point that it's about an hour's drive from "the sea,") Alas, there are also far too many typos.
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