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Neverhome
An extraordinary novel about a wife who disguises herself as a man and goes off to fight in the Civil War.
She calls herself Ash, but that's not her real name. She is a farmer's faithful wife, but she has left her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War. NEVERHOME tells the harrowing story of Ash Thompson during the battle for the South. Through bloodshed and hysteria and heartbreak, she becomes a hero, a folk legend, a madwoman and a traitor to the American cause.
Laird Hunt's dazzling new novel throws a light on the adventurous women who chose to fight instead of stay behind. It is also a mystery story: why did Ash leave and her husband stay? Why can she not return? What will she have to go through to make it back home?
In gorgeous prose, Hunt's rebellious young heroine fights her way through history, and back home to her husband, and finally into our hearts.
She calls herself Ash, but that's not her real name. She is a farmer's faithful wife, but she has left her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War. NEVERHOME tells the harrowing story of Ash Thompson during the battle for the South. Through bloodshed and hysteria and heartbreak, she becomes a hero, a folk legend, a madwoman and a traitor to the American cause.
Laird Hunt's dazzling new novel throws a light on the adventurous women who chose to fight instead of stay behind. It is also a mystery story: why did Ash leave and her husband stay? Why can she not return? What will she have to go through to make it back home?
In gorgeous prose, Hunt's rebellious young heroine fights her way through history, and back home to her husband, and finally into our hearts.
265 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 9, 2014
175 people are currently reading
9314 people want to read
About the author
Laird Hunt
40 books515 followersLaird Hunt is an American writer, translator and academic.
Hunt grew up in Singapore, San Francisco, The Hague, and London before moving to his grandmother's farm in rural Indiana, where he attended Clinton Central High School. He earned a B.A. from Indiana University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He also studied French literature at the Sorbonne. Hunt worked in the press office at the United Nations while writing his first novel. He is currently a professor in the Creative Writing program at University of Denver. Hunt lives with his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, in Boulder, Colorado.
Hunt grew up in Singapore, San Francisco, The Hague, and London before moving to his grandmother's farm in rural Indiana, where he attended Clinton Central High School. He earned a B.A. from Indiana University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He also studied French literature at the Sorbonne. Hunt worked in the press office at the United Nations while writing his first novel. He is currently a professor in the Creative Writing program at University of Denver. Hunt lives with his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, in Boulder, Colorado.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,084 reviews
February 19, 2017
I call this quiet writing - simple language with phrases full of unbelievably clear descriptions. It’s a small book, telling a big and bold story of a woman impersonating a man so she can go to war. She is strong, her husband is not, so she went to fight for the Union. Ash is physically strong, digs ditches and graves and her eyesight is sharp so she kills squirrels, pigs, and men. Stronger in will and mind to do what she sets out to do, she endures, while missing her husband, her home, her land. In doing so, she hides who she is to be true to herself.
Her “hell” on this journey is what this book is a about. The war, her fellow soldiers, her colonel, the people she meets along the way - parts of this slice of time in this country. It is mind boggling to consider how much is in this story.
At one point Ash tells of her mother telling fairy tales ending one with the beginning of another , moving from one story into the next .This is just how this story is told - moving from one part of Ash's journey seamlessly to the next .
It is 256 pages full of heart, soul , and history , life, death , the land , and a character that will never leave you. It left me breathless - a small price to pay for this exquisite book.
Thanks so much to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read this book.
December 27, 2024
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for letting me read this book ahead of publication.
"Laird Hunt's new novel is a beguiling and evocative story about love and loss, duty and deceit. Through the assured voice of his narrator and the subtle beauty of his writing, Neverhome took me on a journey so thoroughly engrossed that there were times the pages seemed to turn themselves."
Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
"A spare, beautiful novel, so deeply about America and the language of America that its sentences seem to rise up from the earth itself. Laird Hunt had me under his spell from the first word of Neverhome to the last. Magnificent."
Paul Auster, author of The New York Trilogy and Report from the Interior
I add my voice to Kevin Power's and Paul Auster's. This was one hell of a novel.
A woman dresses up as a man and goes off to war as a Union soldier. Constance becomes Ash.
The simplest, purest writing is often the most incantatory. Here is a bewitching character that will seep into your skin for days and lead you softly by the hand through a divided nation whose burnt landscapes and fiery battles still echo in the United States' collective consciousness.
Her voice (and this entire novel is spun around the power of this voice) rises with an uncanny sense of self and the land, of dreams and memories, of shards of thoughts and primeval emotions. It imbues every single scene with such a vivid presence that each moment ends up imprinted on a photographic glass plate, indelible and haunting.
A novel that trembles between the natural world and those who bring fire to it, between a woman and her invented self, between the life force of an ideal and the stenches of the dead.
One of my favourite books of 2014.
"Laird Hunt's new novel is a beguiling and evocative story about love and loss, duty and deceit. Through the assured voice of his narrator and the subtle beauty of his writing, Neverhome took me on a journey so thoroughly engrossed that there were times the pages seemed to turn themselves."
Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
"A spare, beautiful novel, so deeply about America and the language of America that its sentences seem to rise up from the earth itself. Laird Hunt had me under his spell from the first word of Neverhome to the last. Magnificent."
Paul Auster, author of The New York Trilogy and Report from the Interior
I add my voice to Kevin Power's and Paul Auster's. This was one hell of a novel.
A woman dresses up as a man and goes off to war as a Union soldier. Constance becomes Ash.
The simplest, purest writing is often the most incantatory. Here is a bewitching character that will seep into your skin for days and lead you softly by the hand through a divided nation whose burnt landscapes and fiery battles still echo in the United States' collective consciousness.
Her voice (and this entire novel is spun around the power of this voice) rises with an uncanny sense of self and the land, of dreams and memories, of shards of thoughts and primeval emotions. It imbues every single scene with such a vivid presence that each moment ends up imprinted on a photographic glass plate, indelible and haunting.
A novel that trembles between the natural world and those who bring fire to it, between a woman and her invented self, between the life force of an ideal and the stenches of the dead.
One of my favourite books of 2014.
June 19, 2014
Over four hundred women fought on both sides of the Civil War. This is a story about one of the woman, Constance, who leaves her husband to take care of their farm in Indiana and goes off to fight for the Union.
In a short number of pages we follow Constance, who becomes Ash, as she hikes, hunts and forages for food, to the horrific and costly battle at Antietam,and through other trials and misfortunes. What is so amazing in this book is how detailed everything is, how wonderful the writing, how convincing the story was and how it paints a small slice of the Civil War. The blacks trying to move North, hoping to find a better life, the friendships made, the horror of battle and seeing the dead all around, the piles of limbs from the amputations, those on the road who are the walking wounded are all related here.
A powerful, albeit short novel that covers so much ground and does it so convincingly. A gutsy heroine whose misfortunes will not end after her service in the war and the secondary characters whose stories are heartbreaking as well, but still manage to provide a helping hand. A small glimpse of history, poignantly told.
ARC from Little Brown publishers.
In a short number of pages we follow Constance, who becomes Ash, as she hikes, hunts and forages for food, to the horrific and costly battle at Antietam,and through other trials and misfortunes. What is so amazing in this book is how detailed everything is, how wonderful the writing, how convincing the story was and how it paints a small slice of the Civil War. The blacks trying to move North, hoping to find a better life, the friendships made, the horror of battle and seeing the dead all around, the piles of limbs from the amputations, those on the road who are the walking wounded are all related here.
A powerful, albeit short novel that covers so much ground and does it so convincingly. A gutsy heroine whose misfortunes will not end after her service in the war and the secondary characters whose stories are heartbreaking as well, but still manage to provide a helping hand. A small glimpse of history, poignantly told.
ARC from Little Brown publishers.
September 30, 2014
Ghosts crowd thick in Laird Hunt’s Civil War novel, “Neverhome,” and they’re not just the shades of dead Blues and Grays. A host of literary allusions haunt this book, from “Cold Mountain” to “The Red Badge of Courage” and all the way back to Homer. But what’s most striking is Hunt’s effective reversal of the roles of brave warrior and patient homemaker. In this trim epic, Penelope marches into battle while Odysseus waits behind. Inspired by true tales of hundreds of women who fought in the War Between the States, “Neverhome” tells the story of a young wife named Constance who cuts her hair, binds her breasts and heads off to defend the Union in 1862.
That extraordinary act seems at first a way to spare her timid husband, Bartholomew, from the burden of enlisting. He’s a great dancer but not much of a fighter. “We were about the same small size, but he was made out of wool and I was made out of wire,” Constance says. “He would turn away any time he could, and I never, ever backed down.”
Soon, it’s clear that she isn’t just protecting her husband back in Indiana; she craves the battlefield. “If I didn’t stay to see some of the fight,” she tells us, “I would forever be filled with the echoes of regret and the ague of remorse.” Life among soldiers makes her “fierce happy.”
Untraditional as they both are, Constance and Bartholomew are a good match, comfortable with their reversed roles, without sounding like third-wave feminists or even 21st-century liberals leaning in or helping out around the house. In fact, “Neverhome” succeeds largely because Constance’s voice sounds so historically distant, like a foreign cousin of our own era.
Hunt, whose previous novel, “Kind One,” was a finalist for last year’s PEN/Faulkner Award, avoids what Henry James called the “fatal cheapness” of historical fiction. The Master wasn’t just anticipating the stunning white teeth of those underwear models that make today’s costume dramas so anachronistic. He was warning about something beyond mere detail: “You may multiply the little facts that can be got from pictures and documents, relics and prints, as much as you like,” James advised, but that can’t help an author with “the invention, the representation of the old consciousness, the soul, the sense, the horizon, the vision of individuals in whose minds half the things that make ours, that make the modern world were non-existent.”
In “Neverhome,” Hunt lays out an “old consciousness” informed only by the example of Constance’s steely mother, who stood up for weaker people until she hanged herself from an ash tree in the yard. I suspect Hollywood is already circling around this story, trying to figure out how Constance can be stripped of her irreducible oddness and transformed into a Civil War Lara Croft. (Resist, Mr. Hunt, resist!)
Over the course of the novel, in a series of three- and four-page chapters, Hunt draws Constance through the weird mixture of horror and absurdity of a nation tearing itself apart. Disguised as a soldier, she gives herself the name Ash Thompson, but despite her sharp shot and good discipline, she’s never really one of the boys. Her fellow soldiers sense her reserve, even her special competence, and when she performs a courtesy for a girl in one of the towns they pass through, Constance gets the nickname “Gallant Ash,” a sobriquet that eventually inspires folktales and campfire songs.
The battle scenes are short and intense, filled with surreal images of sudden destruction wrought from afar. “We started to see gray off in the distance,” she says. “The cannon fire grew so hot it seemed like the injury was already being done to us before we had fairly arrived and that we were already part of the world’s everlasting grief and glory, and we could see the trees crashing down destroyed in the heights and hear the sound, from all quarters, of hurt men letting the air out of their throats. . . . The boy next to me caught his ravishing and fell away just as we were lifting our guns.” What a rare pleasure to spend a few hours listening to the natural poetry of that antique voice.
Even more compelling, though, are Constance’s peculiar adventures away from battle, when she’s captured by bandits or, later, imprisoned. Her ingenuity, combined with her ability to switch genders in a flash, makes her a particularly wily fighter. But nothing will prepare you for the way her quick-trigger brutality explodes off the page. Trained by her mother never to turn the other cheek, she doesn’t hesitate to shoot a dishonorable man in the mouth. Discovering that an assailant isn’t quite dead, she calmly shoots him again. “You get to where you can do things you couldn’t have dreamed up the outline of before,” she notes.
Other scenes along this picaresque adventure are “as vague as the horse’s dream.” Walking through a field that holds hundreds of “the dead and the about-dead,” passing through a town in which all the residents have gone mad, watching an assembly line of amputations — these real-life nightmares are as otherworldly as the scenes of ghostly visitation. But not all of Constance’s sights are unrelentingly ghastly. Indeed, one of the most memorable things she sees is a greenhouse made entirely from photographic glass plates of soldiers, their images gradually fading in the sun. How beautiful a vision is that?
Years later, looking over books on the Civil War, Constance complains, “You would think it was just captains and colonels and generals leading each other in one after another handsome charge. . . . In these stories, women are saints and angels and men are courageous noble folk and everything they do gets done nice and quick and nothing smells like blood.” Alas, she knows better: “It wasn’t pretty.” But in the daguerreotype hues of this narrative, the adventures of one unusual soldier are wound with the tones of an ancient tragedy.
This review first appeared in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
That extraordinary act seems at first a way to spare her timid husband, Bartholomew, from the burden of enlisting. He’s a great dancer but not much of a fighter. “We were about the same small size, but he was made out of wool and I was made out of wire,” Constance says. “He would turn away any time he could, and I never, ever backed down.”
Soon, it’s clear that she isn’t just protecting her husband back in Indiana; she craves the battlefield. “If I didn’t stay to see some of the fight,” she tells us, “I would forever be filled with the echoes of regret and the ague of remorse.” Life among soldiers makes her “fierce happy.”
Untraditional as they both are, Constance and Bartholomew are a good match, comfortable with their reversed roles, without sounding like third-wave feminists or even 21st-century liberals leaning in or helping out around the house. In fact, “Neverhome” succeeds largely because Constance’s voice sounds so historically distant, like a foreign cousin of our own era.
Hunt, whose previous novel, “Kind One,” was a finalist for last year’s PEN/Faulkner Award, avoids what Henry James called the “fatal cheapness” of historical fiction. The Master wasn’t just anticipating the stunning white teeth of those underwear models that make today’s costume dramas so anachronistic. He was warning about something beyond mere detail: “You may multiply the little facts that can be got from pictures and documents, relics and prints, as much as you like,” James advised, but that can’t help an author with “the invention, the representation of the old consciousness, the soul, the sense, the horizon, the vision of individuals in whose minds half the things that make ours, that make the modern world were non-existent.”
In “Neverhome,” Hunt lays out an “old consciousness” informed only by the example of Constance’s steely mother, who stood up for weaker people until she hanged herself from an ash tree in the yard. I suspect Hollywood is already circling around this story, trying to figure out how Constance can be stripped of her irreducible oddness and transformed into a Civil War Lara Croft. (Resist, Mr. Hunt, resist!)
Over the course of the novel, in a series of three- and four-page chapters, Hunt draws Constance through the weird mixture of horror and absurdity of a nation tearing itself apart. Disguised as a soldier, she gives herself the name Ash Thompson, but despite her sharp shot and good discipline, she’s never really one of the boys. Her fellow soldiers sense her reserve, even her special competence, and when she performs a courtesy for a girl in one of the towns they pass through, Constance gets the nickname “Gallant Ash,” a sobriquet that eventually inspires folktales and campfire songs.
The battle scenes are short and intense, filled with surreal images of sudden destruction wrought from afar. “We started to see gray off in the distance,” she says. “The cannon fire grew so hot it seemed like the injury was already being done to us before we had fairly arrived and that we were already part of the world’s everlasting grief and glory, and we could see the trees crashing down destroyed in the heights and hear the sound, from all quarters, of hurt men letting the air out of their throats. . . . The boy next to me caught his ravishing and fell away just as we were lifting our guns.” What a rare pleasure to spend a few hours listening to the natural poetry of that antique voice.
Even more compelling, though, are Constance’s peculiar adventures away from battle, when she’s captured by bandits or, later, imprisoned. Her ingenuity, combined with her ability to switch genders in a flash, makes her a particularly wily fighter. But nothing will prepare you for the way her quick-trigger brutality explodes off the page. Trained by her mother never to turn the other cheek, she doesn’t hesitate to shoot a dishonorable man in the mouth. Discovering that an assailant isn’t quite dead, she calmly shoots him again. “You get to where you can do things you couldn’t have dreamed up the outline of before,” she notes.
Other scenes along this picaresque adventure are “as vague as the horse’s dream.” Walking through a field that holds hundreds of “the dead and the about-dead,” passing through a town in which all the residents have gone mad, watching an assembly line of amputations — these real-life nightmares are as otherworldly as the scenes of ghostly visitation. But not all of Constance’s sights are unrelentingly ghastly. Indeed, one of the most memorable things she sees is a greenhouse made entirely from photographic glass plates of soldiers, their images gradually fading in the sun. How beautiful a vision is that?
Years later, looking over books on the Civil War, Constance complains, “You would think it was just captains and colonels and generals leading each other in one after another handsome charge. . . . In these stories, women are saints and angels and men are courageous noble folk and everything they do gets done nice and quick and nothing smells like blood.” Alas, she knows better: “It wasn’t pretty.” But in the daguerreotype hues of this narrative, the adventures of one unusual soldier are wound with the tones of an ancient tragedy.
This review first appeared in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
December 19, 2019
During the day they worked their mortars on us. You would have thought it was snowing dirt and fine flaked metal after a while. They killed a number of my company off for good but never took our cannon while we were at the guard. One time they tried a charge. To this day I will raise my weapon on any rebel I see, but the sight of a line of those fine horsemen coming at you through the smoke was a beautiful thing to behold. There was the part of the South worth keeping in that charge. It wasn't the part kept chattel slaves to scratch their masters' backs and make their beds. To work their fields. To build their houses. To whip when they wanted to. It was those horsemen, riding low, pistols at the ready, sabers up. They looked like knights. Like it wasn't powder black on their faces they were wearing but grim ladies' scarves on their sleeves.
Less a novel than a character study, Laird Hunt's Neverhome follows the journey of Ash Thompson - the name this troubled farm wife dons right along with trousers and boots in order to enlist in the Union Army. Ash is a crack-shot and a good deal more pragmatic about the realities of war than all the bragging boys around her, which eases her past the doubtful eye and straight into the thick of battle. Her voice, in this first-person tale, is singular and enchanting. Yet there is no escaping that there's something amiss.
This slim novel is, perhaps, wanting in dramatic thrust and satisfactory culminations, yet the richness of its prose and the keenness of this woman's portrayal surmounted a number of those hurdles for me. If you're a fan of well-crafted characters, this is one you might like to meet.
Less a novel than a character study, Laird Hunt's Neverhome follows the journey of Ash Thompson - the name this troubled farm wife dons right along with trousers and boots in order to enlist in the Union Army. Ash is a crack-shot and a good deal more pragmatic about the realities of war than all the bragging boys around her, which eases her past the doubtful eye and straight into the thick of battle. Her voice, in this first-person tale, is singular and enchanting. Yet there is no escaping that there's something amiss.
This slim novel is, perhaps, wanting in dramatic thrust and satisfactory culminations, yet the richness of its prose and the keenness of this woman's portrayal surmounted a number of those hurdles for me. If you're a fan of well-crafted characters, this is one you might like to meet.
November 3, 2025
Constance/Ash leaves her husband behind on the farm to join the Union to fight in the Civil War. The only explanation given is that "she was strong and he was not". She has been raised to be tough, can shoot better than most men and can take care of herself. In addition to everything else, she has to hide the fact she's a woman. So she joins up and marches off to fight.
This story is not at all what I thought it would be when I started reading. More than anything, it was reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. With a bit of Cold Mountain thrown in. This is not a tale of glory and honor and fighting for a cause, it was instead an odyssey that is probably truer in fact than the history books. The people she met, the things she saw and experienced, the scorched earth and destruction she walked through, the everyday horror that became commonplace because there was so much of it; it must have seemed to the ones who lived through it like the end of the world, with survival a minute to minute thing. Survival only to return to a new and different world.
This is my third book by Laird Hunt, and he gets me every time with his simple language and characters that are real people, telling a story that is bigger than any of us, because it's really about all of us.
This story is not at all what I thought it would be when I started reading. More than anything, it was reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. With a bit of Cold Mountain thrown in. This is not a tale of glory and honor and fighting for a cause, it was instead an odyssey that is probably truer in fact than the history books. The people she met, the things she saw and experienced, the scorched earth and destruction she walked through, the everyday horror that became commonplace because there was so much of it; it must have seemed to the ones who lived through it like the end of the world, with survival a minute to minute thing. Survival only to return to a new and different world.
This is my third book by Laird Hunt, and he gets me every time with his simple language and characters that are real people, telling a story that is bigger than any of us, because it's really about all of us.
November 10, 2025
Published in 2014 and optioned for film, which to this point has not come to fruition, ‘Neverhome takes on a gutsy and fierce heroine. Constance becomes Ash Thompson and joins the Union Army. She leaves her husband, Bartholomew, at their Indiana Farm, saying “I was strong and he was not.” Over the course of the narrative, the story of their relationship and her reasons for leaving are disclosed. Her first letters to Bartholomew say she misses him and that she is happy. Her exuberance reveals a soldier not yet battle-hardened.
Throughout the novel, it is Ash’s strong voice and personality that carry the story. She’s feisty, brave, and quick-witted. Her quick wit may save her, but it won’t keep her from suffering. An undercurrent of lightness, almost of humor, accompanies many of Ash’s thoughts and experiences. For example, she asks a fellow whether love or duty should triumph. His answer, “Love? What in hell is love?” There is often an electricity of wisdom that falls in behind the humor as in There is shelter and then there is the idea of shelter. Shore up under the second all you want. You still get wet.
Ash’s physical journey across the American landscape is also a spiritual one. Both are harrowing. Her spiritual journey (some may describe this as a psychic journey or one toward emotional growth) has her in conversation with her dead mother and trying to figure out if her marriage to Bartholomew is still solid and alive. Is she meant to survive?
Hunt doesn’t spare the sensibilities in describing battle scenes. In “A Conversation with Laird Hunt’ which follows the story, he talks about how soldiers in the Civil War didn’t have a bird’s-eye view of the fighting. Their understanding was in the physicality and geography of the moment-to-moment. Without cell phones, computers, and GPS, the soldier was reduced to relying upon his immediate superior and fellow soldiers. The fog of war was all-encompassing in a way that we can only imagine today.
Hunt explores gender roles and expectations. Ash meets another woman on the road who has traveled in disguise as a male soldier, three abandoned girl children who mean to take her on as their mother, and then there’s Neva Thatcher, the nurse who takes her in after a battle injury. There’s also the men and how she associates with them and manages to hide her identity. Ash and a young boy around sixteen line up for shaves, neither having one facial hair to spare. Still, who would turn away a young man who is ready to lay down his life?
The one fault I have with the narrative is that I would have liked more depth in secondary characters. The author grants enough insight into these characters that I want more. Especially of Bartholomew and The General. The prose is straightforward and descriptive without being flowery. The protagonist is engaging, and there is a mystery about her that I want to chase to its conclusion. The brutality of the war is ever-present from the first battle scene onwards. Mostly, I found the story immersive and compelling.
Throughout the novel, it is Ash’s strong voice and personality that carry the story. She’s feisty, brave, and quick-witted. Her quick wit may save her, but it won’t keep her from suffering. An undercurrent of lightness, almost of humor, accompanies many of Ash’s thoughts and experiences. For example, she asks a fellow whether love or duty should triumph. His answer, “Love? What in hell is love?” There is often an electricity of wisdom that falls in behind the humor as in There is shelter and then there is the idea of shelter. Shore up under the second all you want. You still get wet.
Ash’s physical journey across the American landscape is also a spiritual one. Both are harrowing. Her spiritual journey (some may describe this as a psychic journey or one toward emotional growth) has her in conversation with her dead mother and trying to figure out if her marriage to Bartholomew is still solid and alive. Is she meant to survive?
Hunt doesn’t spare the sensibilities in describing battle scenes. In “A Conversation with Laird Hunt’ which follows the story, he talks about how soldiers in the Civil War didn’t have a bird’s-eye view of the fighting. Their understanding was in the physicality and geography of the moment-to-moment. Without cell phones, computers, and GPS, the soldier was reduced to relying upon his immediate superior and fellow soldiers. The fog of war was all-encompassing in a way that we can only imagine today.
Hunt explores gender roles and expectations. Ash meets another woman on the road who has traveled in disguise as a male soldier, three abandoned girl children who mean to take her on as their mother, and then there’s Neva Thatcher, the nurse who takes her in after a battle injury. There’s also the men and how she associates with them and manages to hide her identity. Ash and a young boy around sixteen line up for shaves, neither having one facial hair to spare. Still, who would turn away a young man who is ready to lay down his life?
The one fault I have with the narrative is that I would have liked more depth in secondary characters. The author grants enough insight into these characters that I want more. Especially of Bartholomew and The General. The prose is straightforward and descriptive without being flowery. The protagonist is engaging, and there is a mystery about her that I want to chase to its conclusion. The brutality of the war is ever-present from the first battle scene onwards. Mostly, I found the story immersive and compelling.
August 4, 2016
Take Homer’s time-honored classic The Odyssey and give it a twist: what if Penelope were the warrior traveling home to Odysseus?
In Laird Hunt’s brilliantly conceived novel, Constance Thompson – renamed Ash – disguises herself as a man and takes on the role of Union solider in the Civil War. (Of her husband, she says: “I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic.”)
But is it as simple as that? Ash Thompson seems to be harboring some secrets. How much truth is she revealing to us? Is she an ultimate unreliable narrator?
Laird Hunt offers up an original and confident voice and dialect, and is consistently in command of his material. The prose is beautifully crafted and near flawless. (The only flaw is that I had some qualms about whether this was a true female voice or a male-author-channeling-a-female voice).
It has a lot to say about the false glorification of the Civil War (Ash reflects, “In these stories women are saints and angels and men are courageous noble folk and everything they do gets done nice and quick and nothing smells like blood.”) There’s the stuff of legend and the stuff of reality…the lure of adventure and the lure of home… the roles we’re born into and the roles we invent for ourselves to play.
It’s a fine book and I rate it 4.5 stars. I do have one nitpick: Laird Hunt mentions Kettering, Ohio on the very first page; actually, that town got its name in 1955, way after the Civil War.
In Laird Hunt’s brilliantly conceived novel, Constance Thompson – renamed Ash – disguises herself as a man and takes on the role of Union solider in the Civil War. (Of her husband, she says: “I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic.”)
But is it as simple as that? Ash Thompson seems to be harboring some secrets. How much truth is she revealing to us? Is she an ultimate unreliable narrator?
Laird Hunt offers up an original and confident voice and dialect, and is consistently in command of his material. The prose is beautifully crafted and near flawless. (The only flaw is that I had some qualms about whether this was a true female voice or a male-author-channeling-a-female voice).
It has a lot to say about the false glorification of the Civil War (Ash reflects, “In these stories women are saints and angels and men are courageous noble folk and everything they do gets done nice and quick and nothing smells like blood.”) There’s the stuff of legend and the stuff of reality…the lure of adventure and the lure of home… the roles we’re born into and the roles we invent for ourselves to play.
It’s a fine book and I rate it 4.5 stars. I do have one nitpick: Laird Hunt mentions Kettering, Ohio on the very first page; actually, that town got its name in 1955, way after the Civil War.
June 29, 2018
Como yo era fuerte y él no, fui yo a la guerra para defender la República.
Estados Unidos. Guerra de Secesión.
Constance cree que debe participar en el conflicto. Bartholomew, su marido, se queda en casa. Ella se viste de hombre, se convierte en el Galante Ash, y se va al frente. Igual que hicieron, se calcula, entre 400 y 700 mujeres.
Laird Hunt nos narra esta tremenda y terrible historia de un modo casi onírico. De episodio en episodio, vamos conociendo a distintos personajes, en una sucesión de relatos que están entre lo real y lo fantástico: Neva y su primo el "argonauta", el coronel, el hombre del caballo que soñaba, las tres niñas sin padres...
Es una novela hipnótica. La he devorado, se me ha metido dentro y no me abandona. Cuanto más pienso en lo leído más me gusta: que gire en torno a dos temas tan diferentes, la guerra y el amor, lo crudo de muchas escenas, cómo cada vez se hace más atroz e insoportable el estar en el frente... y quizás y por encima de todo, esa mezcla entre el mundo de la cordura y el de la locura, y esa línea tan fina que los separa, tan difíciles de distinguir incluso para nosotros, los lectores.
Estados Unidos. Guerra de Secesión.
Constance cree que debe participar en el conflicto. Bartholomew, su marido, se queda en casa. Ella se viste de hombre, se convierte en el Galante Ash, y se va al frente. Igual que hicieron, se calcula, entre 400 y 700 mujeres.
Laird Hunt nos narra esta tremenda y terrible historia de un modo casi onírico. De episodio en episodio, vamos conociendo a distintos personajes, en una sucesión de relatos que están entre lo real y lo fantástico: Neva y su primo el "argonauta", el coronel, el hombre del caballo que soñaba, las tres niñas sin padres...
Es una novela hipnótica. La he devorado, se me ha metido dentro y no me abandona. Cuanto más pienso en lo leído más me gusta: que gire en torno a dos temas tan diferentes, la guerra y el amor, lo crudo de muchas escenas, cómo cada vez se hace más atroz e insoportable el estar en el frente... y quizás y por encima de todo, esa mezcla entre el mundo de la cordura y el de la locura, y esa línea tan fina que los separa, tan difíciles de distinguir incluso para nosotros, los lectores.
December 16, 2014
I've read a number of novels set during the civil war, but none like this one.
This tale of a woman who donned a union uniform and participated in many campaigns brought this war, with its death and destruction, into clear focus; not at the level that history books recount, but at the personal, soul-altering level. The language used here helped to foster my immersion into the time and character. The pacing was not quick, so I doubt this will appeal to those looking for more action, but I feel it spoke well of the daily drudgery of long, hard marches; far-flung battles; and perpetual hunger.
I won't soon forget this story or the woman at its center. I recommend to all who have an interest on the private impact of war.
I'd like to thank Little, Brown and Company, who provided me with a reading copy through Netgalley for an honest, unbiased review.
This tale of a woman who donned a union uniform and participated in many campaigns brought this war, with its death and destruction, into clear focus; not at the level that history books recount, but at the personal, soul-altering level. The language used here helped to foster my immersion into the time and character. The pacing was not quick, so I doubt this will appeal to those looking for more action, but I feel it spoke well of the daily drudgery of long, hard marches; far-flung battles; and perpetual hunger.
I won't soon forget this story or the woman at its center. I recommend to all who have an interest on the private impact of war.
I'd like to thank Little, Brown and Company, who provided me with a reading copy through Netgalley for an honest, unbiased review.
September 10, 2015
I received this eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affects my opinion of the book.
Ash Thompson is a soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He fights alongside his fellow northerners and has quite a few interesting experiences, being kidnapped, sent to jail, and more. However, he has a secret: he's actually a woman. Yeah, Constance is her real name, and for some reason (seriously, some unknown reason the book never really explains, ugh) she has taken her husband's place in the war.
This book is quite short, but it's surprisingly quite slow as well. Not a whole lot of action takes place. Basically the book follows Constance over about two years of fighting in the Civil War before she returns back home to her husband and their farm (not a spoiler).
The problem I had with this book is that it was all 'tell' and very little 'show.' What I mean by that is the narrator essentially told you everything that was happening instead of having the prose of the story play it out. It's told in the 1st person, but I think I would have preferred it in the 3rd person. Constance just seems emotionless, as if she is trying to tell her whole story objectively, without putting in much of her feelings or thoughts into her experiences.
Also, the ending was quite abrupt. I guess it spiced up the novel a bit, because as a whole their isn't much plot or exciting stuff. I think this book had a lot of potential to be interesting, with the whole concept of women fighters in the Civil War. But sadly it fell a bit flat.
Ash Thompson is a soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He fights alongside his fellow northerners and has quite a few interesting experiences, being kidnapped, sent to jail, and more. However, he has a secret: he's actually a woman. Yeah, Constance is her real name, and for some reason (seriously, some unknown reason the book never really explains, ugh) she has taken her husband's place in the war.
This book is quite short, but it's surprisingly quite slow as well. Not a whole lot of action takes place. Basically the book follows Constance over about two years of fighting in the Civil War before she returns back home to her husband and their farm (not a spoiler).
The problem I had with this book is that it was all 'tell' and very little 'show.' What I mean by that is the narrator essentially told you everything that was happening instead of having the prose of the story play it out. It's told in the 1st person, but I think I would have preferred it in the 3rd person. Constance just seems emotionless, as if she is trying to tell her whole story objectively, without putting in much of her feelings or thoughts into her experiences.
Also, the ending was quite abrupt. I guess it spiced up the novel a bit, because as a whole their isn't much plot or exciting stuff. I think this book had a lot of potential to be interesting, with the whole concept of women fighters in the Civil War. But sadly it fell a bit flat.
November 5, 2014
I'm not sure if Laird Hunt's novel "Neverhome" is actually based on a true story, but it is well-documented that many women fought during the Civil War, disguising themselves as men. Such is the case with the protagonist of Hunt's novel, Constance Thompson, a wife of a farmer who feels the need to go off to war, while her husband, Bartholomew, stays at home because of a disability that makes him unable to fight. She dons the blue uniform, dubs herself Ash Thompson, and heads off to battle.
Hunt's novel is a modern re-telling and re-imagining of Homer's "The Odyssey". It posits the "what-if" scenario of Penelope going off to Troy, fighting bravely, and attempting to return home to her husband Odysseus. Along the way, of course, is every sort of obstacle keeping her from her goal.
My only complaint with Hunt's novel is that it is too short. The prose is beautiful, the chapters are brief, the story moves at a quick pace, but the ending comes all too soon, and it leaves the reader wanting more, especially in regards to the life, post-Civil War, of Constance "Ash" Thompson. an extremely likable albeit enigmatic character.
Comparisons may be drawn to Charles Frazier's novel "Cold Mountain", a National Book Award-winning book that I didn't like when I initially read it. Like Hunt, Frazier is a beautiful writer. "Cold Mountain", however, was, in my opinion, too long and dull and emotionally draining. It left me feeling numb. Hunt's novel left me feeling sad for Ash and the plight that she suffered on the long walk home, but I felt far from numb. Hunt's novel was a fascinating, suspenseful, moving story of the Civil War; specifically, about the women who chose to risk their lives in battle and for whom history has relatively forgotten.
Hunt's novel is a modern re-telling and re-imagining of Homer's "The Odyssey". It posits the "what-if" scenario of Penelope going off to Troy, fighting bravely, and attempting to return home to her husband Odysseus. Along the way, of course, is every sort of obstacle keeping her from her goal.
My only complaint with Hunt's novel is that it is too short. The prose is beautiful, the chapters are brief, the story moves at a quick pace, but the ending comes all too soon, and it leaves the reader wanting more, especially in regards to the life, post-Civil War, of Constance "Ash" Thompson. an extremely likable albeit enigmatic character.
Comparisons may be drawn to Charles Frazier's novel "Cold Mountain", a National Book Award-winning book that I didn't like when I initially read it. Like Hunt, Frazier is a beautiful writer. "Cold Mountain", however, was, in my opinion, too long and dull and emotionally draining. It left me feeling numb. Hunt's novel left me feeling sad for Ash and the plight that she suffered on the long walk home, but I felt far from numb. Hunt's novel was a fascinating, suspenseful, moving story of the Civil War; specifically, about the women who chose to risk their lives in battle and for whom history has relatively forgotten.
September 20, 2021
Πριν λίγους μήνες έμαθα ότι θα κυκλοφορούσε το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο στα ελληνικά (καθώς και το The Evening Road), φυσικά χάρηκα ολίγον τι, γιατί πάντα θέλω να μεταφράζονται μυθιστορήματα αξιόλογων Αμερικάνων συγγραφέων που δεν έχουμε γνωρίσει ιδιαίτερα στην Ελλάδα, και τουλάχιστον το συγκεκριμένο το είχα πετύχει σε μια-δυο λίστες και μου είχε κινήσει το ενδιαφέρον. Λοιπόν, είναι ένα ωραίο και καλογραμμένο ιστορικό δράμα που εκτυλίσσεται κατά τον αμερικάνικο εμφύλιο, με πρωταγωνίστρια και αφηγήτρια της ιστορίας να είναι μια γυναίκα, που αφήνει το σπίτι και τον άντρα της για να πάει να πολεμήσει υπέρ της Ένωσης. Την όλη αφήγηση θα τη χαρακτήριζα ήσυχη και κατά κάποιο τρόπο υποβλητική, χωρίς κουραστικές και άσχετες λεπτομέρειες, γενικά ο τρόπος που η πρωταγωνίστρια περιγράφει όλα αυτά τα συγκλονιστικά που ζει είναι περιεκτικός και αφόρητα ρεαλιστικός. Φυσικά όποιος διαβάσει την ιστορία θα καταλάβει ότι είναι μια τρόπον τινά παραλλαγή της Οδύσσειας, με αντιστροφή ρόλων όμως, καθώς και με ένα ωμό και όχι τόσο ευχάριστο φινάλε. Δεν ξέρω πώς να το πω, αλλά το βιβλίο έχει μια... ήρεμη δύναμη, ίσως δεν ενθουσιάζει, όμως έχει αυτό το κάτι που μπορεί να καθηλώσει τους αναγνώστες.
October 31, 2014
2.5 stars
I wish the title of this book for me would have been Neverread because it kills me to give it this rating. Although I had been looking forward to this book, I found that I couldn't get into it. The last 75 pages were pure torture and I felt like I was running in quick sand to get through them. The book was too focused on day to day, which made it extremely difficult for me. I wanted to know more about the psyche of Ash (Constance). Why did she (and almost 500 women) chose to fight? What I found was a book on the daily excursions of war that when the important questions had been answered, it had already lost my interest. I
Really bummed about this one but there was no way I could go as low as one star.
I wish the title of this book for me would have been Neverread because it kills me to give it this rating. Although I had been looking forward to this book, I found that I couldn't get into it. The last 75 pages were pure torture and I felt like I was running in quick sand to get through them. The book was too focused on day to day, which made it extremely difficult for me. I wanted to know more about the psyche of Ash (Constance). Why did she (and almost 500 women) chose to fight? What I found was a book on the daily excursions of war that when the important questions had been answered, it had already lost my interest. I
Really bummed about this one but there was no way I could go as low as one star.
April 13, 2025
Ash is a woman in disguise as a man in this fast paced historical novel of the civil war. While she's not the best at standing long hours at attention, or other things, few can beat her at sharpshooting.
As the novel progresses, she struggles with being not found out of her secret, along with just struggling to stay alive.
Rated: 5 ⭐
As the novel progresses, she struggles with being not found out of her secret, along with just struggling to stay alive.
Rated: 5 ⭐
March 28, 2022
Η Κονστανς, μεταμφιέζεται σε άντρα κι εγκαταλείποντας τον σύζυγό της και τη φάρμα τους, πηγαίνει να πολεμήσει στον εμφύλιο πόλεμο που δίχασε την Αμερική. Δεινή σκοπευτρια, καταφέρνει να διακριθεί σε ορισμένες μάχες κι όλοι έχουν να μιλούν για τον γενναίο Ας.
Πόσο δύσκολο είναι για μια γυναίκα να πολεμά και συγχρόνως να κρατά κρυφή την ταυτότητά της?
Ο καιρός περνά κι η Κονστανς, αναπολεί στιγμές με τον Βαρθολομαίο, "συζητά" με το φάντασμα της νεκρής μητέρας της και συνεχίζει να πολεμά αδυσωπητα.
Όσο ευφυής και δυναμική κι αν είναι η ίδια, οι θηριωδίες του πολέμου, την μετατρέπουν σε αδίστακτη και αμιληκτη πολεμίστρια.
Η γλώσσα που χρησιμοποιεί ο συγγραφέας είναι λιτή αλλά θα τη χαρακτήριζα και λυρική, παρόλο που μιλά για τη φρίκη του πολέμου και τα μικρά κεφάλαια κρατούν τον αναγνώστη κολλημένο στις αφηγήσεις της Κονστανς.
Ο ίδιος μας βάζει να σκεφτούμε την αντιστροφή των ρόλων Οδυσσέα/Πηνελόπης...άραγε η κατάληξη τους θα είναι το ίδιο θετική?
Το τέλος του βιβλίου ήταν ανάλογο της πορείας της Κονστανς...
Πόσο δύσκολο είναι για μια γυναίκα να πολεμά και συγχρόνως να κρατά κρυφή την ταυτότητά της?
Ο καιρός περνά κι η Κονστανς, αναπολεί στιγμές με τον Βαρθολομαίο, "συζητά" με το φάντασμα της νεκρής μητέρας της και συνεχίζει να πολεμά αδυσωπητα.
Όσο ευφυής και δυναμική κι αν είναι η ίδια, οι θηριωδίες του πολέμου, την μετατρέπουν σε αδίστακτη και αμιληκτη πολεμίστρια.
Η γλώσσα που χρησιμοποιεί ο συγγραφέας είναι λιτή αλλά θα τη χαρακτήριζα και λυρική, παρόλο που μιλά για τη φρίκη του πολέμου και τα μικρά κεφάλαια κρατούν τον αναγνώστη κολλημένο στις αφηγήσεις της Κονστανς.
Ο ίδιος μας βάζει να σκεφτούμε την αντιστροφή των ρόλων Οδυσσέα/Πηνελόπης...άραγε η κατάληξη τους θα είναι το ίδιο θετική?
Το τέλος του βιβλίου ήταν ανάλογο της πορείας της Κονστανς...
August 10, 2014
On the surface, Laird Hunt has written a touching tale about a woman’s love for her husband and the sacrifice she made for him. She went off to fight in the Civil War, leaving him, the weaker one, behind. Since Constance was more masculine in her demeanor and Bartholomew was more feminine, they reversed roles, and he remained at home to tend the farm. Constance Thompson became Ash Thompson and broke her husband’s heart when she left as an entirely different person.
The “Ballad of Gallant Ash” could be an alternate title for this book. Constance needed to join the cause of the Union Army in order to protect her husband and challenge the pain she always carried within her heart and mind. Since her husband was not a tough enough person to go and would certainly meet his death, she donned the clothes of a man and left, hoping to return at the war’s end. Chasing her own fears in the process, she often wondered if fear would find her instead, as her mother had once predicted.
The beauty of the tale is that it is narrated by Constance/Ash, a tough Indiana farmer’s wife, in a voice that is genuine and authentic as a female, but her actions are also credible in the role of a male. Since she is comfortable in the outdoors and is a competent hunter, she is able to use her wiles and her expertise with a gun to protect herself. She is more capable than most of the new recruits, so she quickly makes herself a legend-like soldier, able to do most of what is required proficiently.
The tragedy of war, and what it extorts from enemy and ally alike, is so clearly drawn that when the final page is turned, the reader is almost more than a witness to the events; the reader is almost a participant. The descriptions of the battles are matter of fact, expressed in the simplest of terms, yet they put you in the thick and thin of the fray. Most of the emotion is removed, and only the clear and very concise telling of it remains, describing all of the causes and effects of particular moments in battle, each one almost more significant than the other, if that is possible.
Below the surface, it is a fast, but painful read as it feels like a confession, spoken in the most uncomplicated and honest terms. The sheer simplicity of the tale, in so few words, evokes all the pain of slavery, the agony of war, the depth of lost love and lost children, the enormous sacrifice required and the devotion and loyalty war sometimes inspires in spite of the betrayal it often witnesses. It is quite remarkable in its portrayal of the Civil War. The development of the main character is superb. As her persona changes, from male to female, and back again, she remains a true representation of the female/male soldier and that masquerade that existed during the war.
The tale truly acknowledges the ugliness, violence and hypocrisy of war and shows the soldiers displaying fear and mistrust, disloyalty and deceit, cruelty and shame. It also shows the devotion of those either left behind or actively fighting, to their loved ones and their country, even as it displays, loud and clear, the utter waste war leaves behind, the sheer madness and fear it produces, and the senselessness of the inflicted pain, injustice and retribution, which only lead to more heartache and tragedy in a never ending spiral.
In the language of the poor farmer, without much education, with its own ungrammatical charm, it felt as if Constance/Ash was speaking directly to me. At other times it felt almost like a personal diary, a simple relating of the facts of the day, as she wrote her letters, or spoke with others. As she documented the experiences she witnessed, even when filled with horror, they almost seemed mundane. It seemed as if Ash was becoming more and more inured to the brutality of the war but also completely imbued with its horror and a need for revenge. Her need to extract retribution for the injustices done to herself and her family were eventually her tragic undoing.
The “Ballad of Gallant Ash” could be an alternate title for this book. Constance needed to join the cause of the Union Army in order to protect her husband and challenge the pain she always carried within her heart and mind. Since her husband was not a tough enough person to go and would certainly meet his death, she donned the clothes of a man and left, hoping to return at the war’s end. Chasing her own fears in the process, she often wondered if fear would find her instead, as her mother had once predicted.
The beauty of the tale is that it is narrated by Constance/Ash, a tough Indiana farmer’s wife, in a voice that is genuine and authentic as a female, but her actions are also credible in the role of a male. Since she is comfortable in the outdoors and is a competent hunter, she is able to use her wiles and her expertise with a gun to protect herself. She is more capable than most of the new recruits, so she quickly makes herself a legend-like soldier, able to do most of what is required proficiently.
The tragedy of war, and what it extorts from enemy and ally alike, is so clearly drawn that when the final page is turned, the reader is almost more than a witness to the events; the reader is almost a participant. The descriptions of the battles are matter of fact, expressed in the simplest of terms, yet they put you in the thick and thin of the fray. Most of the emotion is removed, and only the clear and very concise telling of it remains, describing all of the causes and effects of particular moments in battle, each one almost more significant than the other, if that is possible.
Below the surface, it is a fast, but painful read as it feels like a confession, spoken in the most uncomplicated and honest terms. The sheer simplicity of the tale, in so few words, evokes all the pain of slavery, the agony of war, the depth of lost love and lost children, the enormous sacrifice required and the devotion and loyalty war sometimes inspires in spite of the betrayal it often witnesses. It is quite remarkable in its portrayal of the Civil War. The development of the main character is superb. As her persona changes, from male to female, and back again, she remains a true representation of the female/male soldier and that masquerade that existed during the war.
The tale truly acknowledges the ugliness, violence and hypocrisy of war and shows the soldiers displaying fear and mistrust, disloyalty and deceit, cruelty and shame. It also shows the devotion of those either left behind or actively fighting, to their loved ones and their country, even as it displays, loud and clear, the utter waste war leaves behind, the sheer madness and fear it produces, and the senselessness of the inflicted pain, injustice and retribution, which only lead to more heartache and tragedy in a never ending spiral.
In the language of the poor farmer, without much education, with its own ungrammatical charm, it felt as if Constance/Ash was speaking directly to me. At other times it felt almost like a personal diary, a simple relating of the facts of the day, as she wrote her letters, or spoke with others. As she documented the experiences she witnessed, even when filled with horror, they almost seemed mundane. It seemed as if Ash was becoming more and more inured to the brutality of the war but also completely imbued with its horror and a need for revenge. Her need to extract retribution for the injustices done to herself and her family were eventually her tragic undoing.
August 13, 2015
Hunt’s sixth novel reveals the little-known history of women fighting in America’s Civil War. Ash Thompson travels from Indiana to Ohio to enlist for the Union. But here’s the rub: Ash is actually Constance, Bartholomew’s wife. Neverhome is Constance’s journey into battle and finally back home, by way of enemy territory, a makeshift prison, and even a lunatic asylum.
Homer’s Odyssey may be the most obvious reference point here – indeed, one character makes the explicit connection, remarking, “Penelope gone to the war and Odysseus staying home” – but there is plenty of Shakespearean cross-dressing comedy, too. Another pleasure of the novel is Constance’s folksy vocabulary. Tails off in the last third, but the twist ending is worth waiting for.
(See my full review at Nudge.)
*Note: The comparison is with James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird.
Homer’s Odyssey may be the most obvious reference point here – indeed, one character makes the explicit connection, remarking, “Penelope gone to the war and Odysseus staying home” – but there is plenty of Shakespearean cross-dressing comedy, too. Another pleasure of the novel is Constance’s folksy vocabulary. Tails off in the last third, but the twist ending is worth waiting for.
(See my full review at Nudge.)
*Note: The comparison is with James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird.
May 12, 2021
don't like but don't hate this story. it got me thinking about women during the civil war and the ending was not what I was expecting.
October 12, 2023
It was a decent read but not a very memorable one even though it does have a touch of the strange.
October 6, 2021
Με γλώσσα λιτή μα συνάμα διεισδυτική και καθηλωτική, ο συγγραφέας μας αφηγείται την απόφαση μιας νέας γυναίκας να πολεμήσει στον αμερικανικό εμφύλιο. Μια από αρκετές γυναίκες που πήραν την απόφαση να απεκδυθούν το φύλο τους, αποκυρήσσοντας το ρόλο και τη θέση τους στην κοινωνία, βάζοντας τη στρατιωτική στολή.
Η Κονστάνς γίνεται Ας, αφήνει τον σύζυγο της στο σπίτι τους και ξεκινά το ταξίδι της. Θέλει άραγε μόνο να αποκομίσει νέες εμπειρίες και να γνωρίσει τον κόσμο ή κάτι βαθύτερο την παρακινεί να πολεμήσει, να ζητήσει δικαιοσύνη ίσως και λύτρωση;
Ο συγγραφέας μας επισημαίνει την επιρροή του από το ομηρικό έπος υπογραμμίζοντας τις θηριωδίες του πολέμου ανεξάρτητα χρόνου και λόγου.
Η Κονστάνς/Πηνελόπη μετατρέπεται σε Ας/Οδυσσέα, οι ρόλοι αντιστρέφονται, και το αποτέλεσμα είναι μια συγκλονιστική αφήγηση για τη βία του πολέμου, το φόβο, το ρατσισμό, την αγάπη και τη συντροφικότητα.
Μια δυνατή, δυναμική, έξυπνη, θαρραλέα γυναίκα μετατρέπεται σε φονική μηχανή, πασχίζει να επιβιώσει.
Ξεφεύγει από παγίδες και απελευθερώνει τους συντρόφους της σαν άλλος Δούρειος ίππος.
Παλεύει να βρει το δρόμο της επιστροφής, ξεπερνώντας Σειρήνες και νικώντας σκοπέλους. Άραγε θα μπορέσει να νικήσει και το φόβο;
"Ο φόβος θα σε βρεί κι εσένα κάποια μέρα, κόρη μου. Θα σε βρει και με τα κόλπα του θα σου τσακισειτην καρδια".
Η Κονστάνς γίνεται Ας, αφήνει τον σύζυγο της στο σπίτι τους και ξεκινά το ταξίδι της. Θέλει άραγε μόνο να αποκομίσει νέες εμπειρίες και να γνωρίσει τον κόσμο ή κάτι βαθύτερο την παρακινεί να πολεμήσει, να ζητήσει δικαιοσύνη ίσως και λύτρωση;
Ο συγγραφέας μας επισημαίνει την επιρροή του από το ομηρικό έπος υπογραμμίζοντας τις θηριωδίες του πολέμου ανεξάρτητα χρόνου και λόγου.
Η Κονστάνς/Πηνελόπη μετατρέπεται σε Ας/Οδυσσέα, οι ρόλοι αντιστρέφονται, και το αποτέλεσμα είναι μια συγκλονιστική αφήγηση για τη βία του πολέμου, το φόβο, το ρατσισμό, την αγάπη και τη συντροφικότητα.
Μια δυνατή, δυναμική, έξυπνη, θαρραλέα γυναίκα μετατρέπεται σε φονική μηχανή, πασχίζει να επιβιώσει.
Ξεφεύγει από παγίδες και απελευθερώνει τους συντρόφους της σαν άλλος Δούρειος ίππος.
Παλεύει να βρει το δρόμο της επιστροφής, ξεπερνώντας Σειρήνες και νικώντας σκοπέλους. Άραγε θα μπορέσει να νικήσει και το φόβο;
"Ο φόβος θα σε βρεί κι εσένα κάποια μέρα, κόρη μου. Θα σε βρει και με τα κόλπα του θα σου τσακισειτην καρδια".
January 24, 2015
Really surprised at the many 5 star ratings. I first was going to give it 1 simply because I finished it but reconsidered it's worth so gave it the 2. The first few chapters were promising but I felt it became just a bunch of independent storyline ideas thrown together to make a novel.
I wanted to understand why Constance REALLY felt the need to go off to war. Perhaps if the book had been longer allowing for more detail and continuity it would have been more of what I expected.
And don't even ask me what I thought of the ending!
I wanted to understand why Constance REALLY felt the need to go off to war. Perhaps if the book had been longer allowing for more detail and continuity it would have been more of what I expected.
And don't even ask me what I thought of the ending!
May 11, 2017
Do you ever read a book and wonder why it was written?
That's kind of how I felt reading this. There's nothing really wrong with the novel, but there's also nothing especially good about it either. I'd say it's mostly a character study, but I feel that it largely fails there. Ash--or Constance--does many things in the novel, but I never really got a sense for why she did them. She doesn't seem to have any strong feelings about the Civil War, though she decided to fight in it, which was fairly atypical of the time. She also falls into relationships with characters seemingly at random.
The relationship that seems to be very important to her--the one with her husband--is never shown, and then its conclusion is both callous and bizarre and kind of meaningless.
And I guess that's how I feel about the whole book: sort of meaningless.
It doesn't really give us any insight into any specific part of history or humanity. The events of the novel aren't even that interesting (they're not without interest, but I don't feel much about any of the things that happen, and I already kind of don't remember them). The characters aren't very memorable either. Even Ash is kind of a bland shell. The dialogue and writing are fine enough, but they're also not especially memorable.
And so I'm just kind of left with a shrug for this novel. It's fine, but it's also something I probably won't remember by the end of the month.
Maybe this all sounds harsh. I don't hate the novel, which is why I'm giving it two stars instead of one.
That's kind of how I felt reading this. There's nothing really wrong with the novel, but there's also nothing especially good about it either. I'd say it's mostly a character study, but I feel that it largely fails there. Ash--or Constance--does many things in the novel, but I never really got a sense for why she did them. She doesn't seem to have any strong feelings about the Civil War, though she decided to fight in it, which was fairly atypical of the time. She also falls into relationships with characters seemingly at random.
The relationship that seems to be very important to her--the one with her husband--is never shown, and then its conclusion is both callous and bizarre and kind of meaningless.
And I guess that's how I feel about the whole book: sort of meaningless.
It doesn't really give us any insight into any specific part of history or humanity. The events of the novel aren't even that interesting (they're not without interest, but I don't feel much about any of the things that happen, and I already kind of don't remember them). The characters aren't very memorable either. Even Ash is kind of a bland shell. The dialogue and writing are fine enough, but they're also not especially memorable.
And so I'm just kind of left with a shrug for this novel. It's fine, but it's also something I probably won't remember by the end of the month.
Maybe this all sounds harsh. I don't hate the novel, which is why I'm giving it two stars instead of one.
April 2, 2019
Loved this.
Several hundred women are estimated to have fought disguised as men during Civil War. Laird coalesces their stories into the character of Constance "Ash" Thompson.
Constance leaves behind a husband she loves to fight for the Union Army as Ash Thompson. She justifies her leaving stating, “I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic.” In truth, Constance is restless for a life beyond her small farm. The War is a lure she cannot refuse.
Unlike True Grit, there is no humor is Neverhome. The Civil War was a violent business. Over 600,000 died, typically in close quarters combat, multi-shot and longe range weapons having not yet been invented. Laird depicts the harrowing nature by focusing on the visceral minutiae that Constance/Ash witnesses as a foot soldier.
As in all Odysseys, the hero’s wanderlust is eventually satisfied and she turns toward home. The book’s conclusion is true to her story arc. It ends in fine Clint Eastwood western fashion. Read the book. You’ll know what I mean.
Highly recommended if you have any interest in the Civil War or strong women characters. On sale in the Kindle Store as of this writing. The book has been optioned for a movie. I vote Hillary Swank (Million Dollar Baby) for the title role.
Several hundred women are estimated to have fought disguised as men during Civil War. Laird coalesces their stories into the character of Constance "Ash" Thompson.
Constance leaves behind a husband she loves to fight for the Union Army as Ash Thompson. She justifies her leaving stating, “I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic.” In truth, Constance is restless for a life beyond her small farm. The War is a lure she cannot refuse.
I wanted to lie under the stars and smell different breezes. I wanted to drink different waters, feel different heats. Stand with my comrades atop a ruin of old ideas. Walk forward with a thousand others. Plant my boot and steel my eye and not run.Neverhome is written from Constance/Ash's perspective in her voice. Like Mattie Ross in Portis' True Grit, she is fierce. She accepts she brutality of the War and following her mother's teaching—a single women persecuted by her community—delivers the same without remorse: “We do not ever turn the other cheek.” Laird's voicing of Constance/Ash is like Portis' voicing of Mattie Ross, exceptional.
I sent Bartholomew my first letter from Dayton...I wrote that I missed him fierce. I wrote that I was fierce happy too.
Unlike True Grit, there is no humor is Neverhome. The Civil War was a violent business. Over 600,000 died, typically in close quarters combat, multi-shot and longe range weapons having not yet been invented. Laird depicts the harrowing nature by focusing on the visceral minutiae that Constance/Ash witnesses as a foot soldier.
A boy not five feet from me got made into jelly by a piebald mare with red eyes. Another got his head cracked right open with a pistol butt. I took a saber point across my arm and might have met my glory but a ball come out of nowhere and took my ravisher off to his own...I got a first lieutenant died five minutes later to tie a shirt sleeve tight around my wound. When it was snug, I loaded my musket and went back for some more.Constance/Ash marches through this landscape like a titan—stoic and heroic, facing all trials with relentless inertia. Woe to those who stand in her path.
As in all Odysseys, the hero’s wanderlust is eventually satisfied and she turns toward home. The book’s conclusion is true to her story arc. It ends in fine Clint Eastwood western fashion. Read the book. You’ll know what I mean.
Highly recommended if you have any interest in the Civil War or strong women characters. On sale in the Kindle Store as of this writing. The book has been optioned for a movie. I vote Hillary Swank (Million Dollar Baby) for the title role.
September 27, 2021
Ο αριθμός των γυναικών που μεταμφιέστηκαν και φόρεσαν αντρικά ρούχα για να πολεμήσουν στον Αμερικανικό Εμφύλιο υπολογίζεται από τους ιστορικούς ανάμεσα σε 400 και 750. Η Κόνστανς, η κεντρική ηρωίδα, της οποίας την αφήγηση σε πρώτο πρόσωπο διαβάζουμε στις σελίδες αυτού του αναπάντεχα καταπληκτικού βιβλίου, αφήνει τον άντρα της στο αγρόκτημά τους στην Ιντιάνα και μεταμορφώνεται στον Ας για να πολεμήσει στο πλευρό των Βορείων.
Στην αρχή είναι ενθουσιασμένη και πολεμά με πάθος. Η γερή κορμοστασιά της και τα ανδραγαθήματά της (πόσο σεξιστικό το πρώτο συνθετικό ε;) κάνουν τη μεταμφίεση της πειστική και ακόμη κι όσοι την υποψιάζονται δεν προχωρούν σε περαιτέρω διερεύνηση γιατί έχει ήδη αποκτήσει τη φήμη του "Γενναίου Ας".
Όμως η φρίκη του πολέμου σαλεύει το μυαλό ακόμα και των πιο ακλόνητων και γενναίων. Ο Ας που θέλει να γίνει πάλι Κόνστανς και να επιστρέψει, αλλά επιμένει να βυθίζεται ακόμα περισσότερο στην άβυσσο, χάνει τα λογικά του/της. Δέχεται την ολοένα και συχνότερη επίσκεψη του φαντάσματος της νεκρής μητέρας. Κατηγορείται για ληστεία. Μετά για κατασκοπεία. Χωρίς ούτε η ίδια να ξέρει πια σε ποιό φύλο ανήκει ξεκινά τη μεγάλη πορεία της επιστροφής. Όμως όλα έχουν αλλάξει και κυρίως η ίδια.
Το ξεκίνησα σαν μια αντίστροφη ανάγνωση του (επίσης εξαιρετικού) Μέρες Δίχως Τέλος του Σεμπάστιαν Μπάρι, αλλά οι ομοιότητες σταματούν στην παρενδυσία. Ο Χαντ, του οποίου ελπίζω να διαβάσουμε σύντομα περισσότερα βιβλία, κάνει κάτι τελείως διαφορετικό, ξεδιπλώνει μια (υπαρξιακή, μεταφορική, κυριολεκτική) Οδύσσεια στην οποία η Πηνελόπη πηγαίνει στον πόλεμο και ο Οδυσσεάς (περι)μένει στο σπίτι. Γεμίζει τις σελίδες με εικόνες ανεξίτηλης αγριότητας και ομορφιάς και βάζει στο στόμα της αγράμματης ηρωίδας του λέξεις γεμάτες από έναν ακατέργαστο και σπαρακτικό λυρισμό, ειδικά όταν αρχίζει να μετατρέπεται σε αναξιόπιστη αφηγήτρια και να συγχέει την πραγματικότητα με το όνειρο.
Ακόμα και το τέλος θυμίζει το ομηρικό έπος, αλλά ο συγγραφέας προσφέρει κι εκεί μια ευφάνταστη και σοκαριστική ανατροπή, λίγο πριν ο αναγνώστης κλείσει το βιβλίο και μείνει με την επίγευση της επαφής με τη σπουδαία λογοτεχνία. Εκείνη που μοιάζει λίγο με την αίσθηση του να επιστρέφεις στο σπίτι.
Στην αρχή είναι ενθουσιασμένη και πολεμά με πάθος. Η γερή κορμοστασιά της και τα ανδραγαθήματά της (πόσο σεξιστικό το πρώτο συνθετικό ε;) κάνουν τη μεταμφίεση της πειστική και ακόμη κι όσοι την υποψιάζονται δεν προχωρούν σε περαιτέρω διερεύνηση γιατί έχει ήδη αποκτήσει τη φήμη του "Γενναίου Ας".
Όμως η φρίκη του πολέμου σαλεύει το μυαλό ακόμα και των πιο ακλόνητων και γενναίων. Ο Ας που θέλει να γίνει πάλι Κόνστανς και να επιστρέψει, αλλά επιμένει να βυθίζεται ακόμα περισσότερο στην άβυσσο, χάνει τα λογικά του/της. Δέχεται την ολοένα και συχνότερη επίσκεψη του φαντάσματος της νεκρής μητέρας. Κατηγορείται για ληστεία. Μετά για κατασκοπεία. Χωρίς ούτε η ίδια να ξέρει πια σε ποιό φύλο ανήκει ξεκινά τη μεγάλη πορεία της επιστροφής. Όμως όλα έχουν αλλάξει και κυρίως η ίδια.
Το ξεκίνησα σαν μια αντίστροφη ανάγνωση του (επίσης εξαιρετικού) Μέρες Δίχως Τέλος του Σεμπάστιαν Μπάρι, αλλά οι ομοιότητες σταματούν στην παρενδυσία. Ο Χαντ, του οποίου ελπίζω να διαβάσουμε σύντομα περισσότερα βιβλία, κάνει κάτι τελείως διαφορετικό, ξεδιπλώνει μια (υπαρξιακή, μεταφορική, κυριολεκτική) Οδύσσεια στην οποία η Πηνελόπη πηγαίνει στον πόλεμο και ο Οδυσσεάς (περι)μένει στο σπίτι. Γεμίζει τις σελίδες με εικόνες ανεξίτηλης αγριότητας και ομορφιάς και βάζει στο στόμα της αγράμματης ηρωίδας του λέξεις γεμάτες από έναν ακατέργαστο και σπαρακτικό λυρισμό, ειδικά όταν αρχίζει να μετατρέπεται σε αναξιόπιστη αφηγήτρια και να συγχέει την πραγματικότητα με το όνειρο.
Ακόμα και το τέλος θυμίζει το ομηρικό έπος, αλλά ο συγγραφέας προσφέρει κι εκεί μια ευφάνταστη και σοκαριστική ανατροπή, λίγο πριν ο αναγνώστης κλείσει το βιβλίο και μείνει με την επίγευση της επαφής με τη σπουδαία λογοτεχνία. Εκείνη που μοιάζει λίγο με την αίσθηση του να επιστρέφεις στο σπίτι.
November 14, 2021
"I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic."
Laird Hunt's In the House in the Dark of the Woods was one of my favorite literary discoveries of 2018. It is a strange and mysterious novel, and one that I can easily recommend to anyone interested in contemporary weird fiction. It's a beautiful, atmospheric and unsettling book, which in my opinion did not get the recognition it deserved.
Neverhome is an earlier novel of his, very different from In the House... - it is a very different story, much more straightforwardly told, and the weirdness and dissonance of the latter book is completely absent here. Still, it was also a very pleasant surprise, and cemented my dedication to read all of the author's other works.
Neverhome is bonafide historical fiction, set in 1862, and its narrator is Ash Thompson, a female farmer from Indiana. Ash abandons her real name - Constance - and disguises herself as a man in order to join the army and support the Union cause in the Civil War that's ravaging the country. She is a person of strong character and body, compared to her gentle and physically weak husband, Bartholomew - in her words, she was made of wire, whereas he was made out of wood. So, it is he who stays to mind the farm, and she who ventures out into the world to fight the Confederacy and preserve the Republic.
There's much beauty to be found in the book. Hunt's prose is stunning, and I found myself rereading passages just to experience them again; Ash is an interesting narrator, whose no-nonsense reminded me of Mattie from True Grit, though the book as a whole is nowhere near as humorous; seeing her adapt to her new conditions, outwit her enemies and outsmart the circumstances was something I greatly enjoyed.
While I found the denouement to be expectable, for me Neverhome was about the journey, and not the destination; I enjoyed travelling along with Gallant Ash through war-torn America, and I think that you will as well.
Laird Hunt's In the House in the Dark of the Woods was one of my favorite literary discoveries of 2018. It is a strange and mysterious novel, and one that I can easily recommend to anyone interested in contemporary weird fiction. It's a beautiful, atmospheric and unsettling book, which in my opinion did not get the recognition it deserved.
Neverhome is an earlier novel of his, very different from In the House... - it is a very different story, much more straightforwardly told, and the weirdness and dissonance of the latter book is completely absent here. Still, it was also a very pleasant surprise, and cemented my dedication to read all of the author's other works.
Neverhome is bonafide historical fiction, set in 1862, and its narrator is Ash Thompson, a female farmer from Indiana. Ash abandons her real name - Constance - and disguises herself as a man in order to join the army and support the Union cause in the Civil War that's ravaging the country. She is a person of strong character and body, compared to her gentle and physically weak husband, Bartholomew - in her words, she was made of wire, whereas he was made out of wood. So, it is he who stays to mind the farm, and she who ventures out into the world to fight the Confederacy and preserve the Republic.
There's much beauty to be found in the book. Hunt's prose is stunning, and I found myself rereading passages just to experience them again; Ash is an interesting narrator, whose no-nonsense reminded me of Mattie from True Grit, though the book as a whole is nowhere near as humorous; seeing her adapt to her new conditions, outwit her enemies and outsmart the circumstances was something I greatly enjoyed.
While I found the denouement to be expectable, for me Neverhome was about the journey, and not the destination; I enjoyed travelling along with Gallant Ash through war-torn America, and I think that you will as well.
May 8, 2014
Why have I not read Laird Hunt before this work? If his earlier writing is as wonderful as NEVERHOME, I have some catching up to do. I immediatley thought this work was the opposite of COLD MOUNTAIN after finishing the book. Ash wants to get INTO the war unlike Inman who struggled to get away from it. Ash's story is told with some of the most beautiful writing, What is compelling her? What will happen to her? Why? Why? Why? I kept reading, gladly being taken into her life by Hunt's beautifully precise prose. Hunt could have crafted a huge tome, bringing in characters, places, situations that would have created a fuller life story of Ash, but ultimately would have ruined what is now between the covers of this masterpiece.
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April 30, 2023Ένα πολύ δυνατό βιβλίο για μια γυναίκα που κατατάσσεται και πολεμά στον Αμερικανικό Εμφύλιο έχοντας να αντιμετωπίσει όχι μόνο τη φρίκη που πολέμου, η οποία αναδεικνύεται μέσα από όσα της συμβαίνουν αλλά και την κοινωνική αντιμετώπιση των γυναικών της εποχής.
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July 28, 2024
Hunt’s trademark lyrical prose enriches this Odyssey-like tale of the U.S. Civil War in which an Indiana farm wife, for reasons never made entirely clear, disguises herself as a man, leaves her husband and enlists to fight in the Union army. Some hair-raising descriptions of battle’s scenes of carnage.
July 1, 2014
Thank you Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for a copy of the book.
Neverhome is one epic story. It’s so strong and so emotional. This is also how our protagonist Ash is portrayed. Ash, who is really Constance, disguises herself as a man to fight in the Civil War as a Union soldier. She ends up fooling most of those in the war and those who guess her real guise find their way to being interesting niches in the story. Her husband is not as strong as she is in body and in mind and so she feels that it is her duty to go and him stay home on the farm. As the story progresses we see that this isn’t the only reason she left to fight. She has things on her mind that she clearly needs to work through, but the war seems to only add to her plight. Much of this book is written in a stream of consciousness and is very poetic. Simple language that flows from her dreams to the battlefield and back to her memories. This book is not for the faint of heart as the war scenes are blatantly graphic and there is nothing glamorized about it. Ash walks through fields of the dead and sees amputated limbs thrown from windows. There is so much detail and emotion written about Ash’s journey through war and back that one would think that it would be longer than it’s 256 pages, but Hunt was very concise in writing exactly what needed to be written and nothing more. This was a great literary read.
I was surprised to find out that 400 women actually did what Ash did and fought in the Civil War. This
photo is one that I found at examiner.com of one of these actual women. They definitely had guts.
http://www.examiner.com/article/civil...
Neverhome is one epic story. It’s so strong and so emotional. This is also how our protagonist Ash is portrayed. Ash, who is really Constance, disguises herself as a man to fight in the Civil War as a Union soldier. She ends up fooling most of those in the war and those who guess her real guise find their way to being interesting niches in the story. Her husband is not as strong as she is in body and in mind and so she feels that it is her duty to go and him stay home on the farm. As the story progresses we see that this isn’t the only reason she left to fight. She has things on her mind that she clearly needs to work through, but the war seems to only add to her plight. Much of this book is written in a stream of consciousness and is very poetic. Simple language that flows from her dreams to the battlefield and back to her memories. This book is not for the faint of heart as the war scenes are blatantly graphic and there is nothing glamorized about it. Ash walks through fields of the dead and sees amputated limbs thrown from windows. There is so much detail and emotion written about Ash’s journey through war and back that one would think that it would be longer than it’s 256 pages, but Hunt was very concise in writing exactly what needed to be written and nothing more. This was a great literary read.
I was surprised to find out that 400 women actually did what Ash did and fought in the Civil War. This
photo is one that I found at examiner.com of one of these actual women. They definitely had guts.
http://www.examiner.com/article/civil...
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