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The Groundhog Forever
The Groundhog Forever shadows two film students in early-millennial Manhattan as they become stuck in the vicious sequel to a cherished movie. What follows is a high-concept novel of queer friendship, celebrity worship and artistic immortality. Today is the last day of the best of your life.
"A radiant, shapeshifting novel about fame, friendship, the ecstasy and agony of repetition, and The Divine Bill Murray. In playful, exhilarating prose, Hoke pushes sentential limits, wryly examining the way art marks the world (and the many ways in which it fails to do so). Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of the spellbinding groundhog logic, the story blooms and swerves and evades, irresistible in its capacity for endless reinvention."
-Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light
"A gorgeous love letter to reality's unfolding, this beautifully written, magically real adventure paints a lucid, abstract-expressionistic kind-of-a-sensation of being limitless even while standing under the fluorescent lights of the institution."
-Speed Levitch, author of Speedology
"The Groundhog Forever is that tricky kind of trick: the kind that says it's just a little fun thing, but then opens up the entire world's guts and out comes LIFE. Henry Hoke's sentences contain teeming cosmos, yet are somehow small enough to hide in your pocket. There's ancient pathos in the quotidian, groovy earworms in the depths. It's one day that is infinite, which means it's also the immeasurable everything of right now."
-Johanna Hedva, author of Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain
"Knowing nothing of this novel I began to read it on April 27th, the day after the night I happened to watch again, through no choice of my own, for the first time since childhood, the movie where Groundhog Day nearly never ends: All this is true and will make sense to you once you have read this multiverse, magic book, too. Such is its power."
-Katherine Faw, author of Ultraluminous
"A radiant, shapeshifting novel about fame, friendship, the ecstasy and agony of repetition, and The Divine Bill Murray. In playful, exhilarating prose, Hoke pushes sentential limits, wryly examining the way art marks the world (and the many ways in which it fails to do so). Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of the spellbinding groundhog logic, the story blooms and swerves and evades, irresistible in its capacity for endless reinvention."
-Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light
"A gorgeous love letter to reality's unfolding, this beautifully written, magically real adventure paints a lucid, abstract-expressionistic kind-of-a-sensation of being limitless even while standing under the fluorescent lights of the institution."
-Speed Levitch, author of Speedology
"The Groundhog Forever is that tricky kind of trick: the kind that says it's just a little fun thing, but then opens up the entire world's guts and out comes LIFE. Henry Hoke's sentences contain teeming cosmos, yet are somehow small enough to hide in your pocket. There's ancient pathos in the quotidian, groovy earworms in the depths. It's one day that is infinite, which means it's also the immeasurable everything of right now."
-Johanna Hedva, author of Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain
"Knowing nothing of this novel I began to read it on April 27th, the day after the night I happened to watch again, through no choice of my own, for the first time since childhood, the movie where Groundhog Day nearly never ends: All this is true and will make sense to you once you have read this multiverse, magic book, too. Such is its power."
-Katherine Faw, author of Ultraluminous
- GenresFiction
167 pages, Paperback
First published April 27, 2021
About the author
Henry Hoke
12 books392 followersHenry Hoke is an editor at The Offing and the author of five books, most recently the novel Open Throat (MCDxFSG / Picador), and the memoir Sticker (Bloomsbury).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 7, 2024
I started to read this novel immediately after finishing Open Throat (which I loved), and abandoned it after a few chapters because although I found the concept really intriguing, it just didn't grab me like Open Throat had.
Cut to finding myself on a short flight to New York City this weekend with a bit of a wait for my fellow travelers to arrive, and there it was on my kindle app.
The slipstream, out of time feeling of being in airports was the perfect setting to read this weird, high concept, existential novel. The basic story is that two queer new york film students see Bill Murray do a screening and Q&A about Groundhog Day and then suddenly find themselves caught in a time loop, repeating a Tuesday in April over and over. They test the limits, try to make art, try to repair relationships, try and fail to find meaning in the time loop. They also hang out with Bill Murray and a fringe punk rock goddess.
It's fun and weird and deep and sometimes very sad, like when they start to realize the similarities to that other Long Bad Day in NYC history.
There's some really beautiful and funny and smart writing.
I never felt incredibly attached to the main characters (like the way I fell desperately in love with the mountain lion in Open Throat) but I think their relationship is something very special and the book is well worth reading.
Cut to finding myself on a short flight to New York City this weekend with a bit of a wait for my fellow travelers to arrive, and there it was on my kindle app.
The slipstream, out of time feeling of being in airports was the perfect setting to read this weird, high concept, existential novel. The basic story is that two queer new york film students see Bill Murray do a screening and Q&A about Groundhog Day and then suddenly find themselves caught in a time loop, repeating a Tuesday in April over and over. They test the limits, try to make art, try to repair relationships, try and fail to find meaning in the time loop. They also hang out with Bill Murray and a fringe punk rock goddess.
It's fun and weird and deep and sometimes very sad, like when they start to realize the similarities to that other Long Bad Day in NYC history.
There's some really beautiful and funny and smart writing.
I never felt incredibly attached to the main characters (like the way I fell desperately in love with the mountain lion in Open Throat) but I think their relationship is something very special and the book is well worth reading.
June 20, 2021
I really love philosophical lit which is what I would personally call this. When it is done well it makes you laugh. Or at least chuckle. Or at at least I do because I'm not going to sit there and cry about the absurdity. Thing 1 and Thing 2 do all sorts of things to fill the repetition of pushing the rock up the mountain. Were any of them meaningful? There was like one day they "did" that I thought was particularly meaningful. But was it really? I don't know. I am a big of Hoke's writing because he is a master of accessible pretention. This was a FUN, and SAD, and WEIRD book.
August 9, 2025
Open Throat is one of my favourite books of all time and groundhogs are my favourite animal of all time and so this marriage felt perfectly suited for me. Then… I wasn’t sure about it for most of the book, but the ending was so cataclysmic to me that I cried. I guess I loved it.
May 6, 2021
Thanks to WTAW Press for a finished copy of this title, which was published on Tuesday April 27, 2021. I'm writing this review voluntarily.
"The Groundhog Forever" is a delightfully odd and curious short novel about two New York film students who get trapped in a daylong time loop on Tuesday April 27 in early 2000s Manhattan. Of course, this happens to be a day when they watch the film "Groundhog Day" and meet Bill Murray in a film class. It's like the inseparable friends--a woman nicknamed "Thing 1," and a man called "Thing 2," but both queer--are stuck in a sequel version of the Murray movie in real life: no matter what they do, they wake up in the same way on the same day.
The book is goofy and upsetting and existentially insightful in equal measure. It's about our fascination with the famous at a distance, and how our interest shifts with close contact. It's about how artists always wish they had more time to create, when it's not clear how limitless, infinite time would change the outcome. It's about that intense, platonic love that can form between two friends who share the same passions--and the particular kind of pain those relationships can cause. Henry Hoke also smartly links this repeating Tuesday to another seemingly endless Tuesday in New York, September 11, when everything changed, yet the perpetual wars feel like different versions of the same thing. Ultimately, just like the original film, it's about the potential of a constant present--what happens when people really start living in the moment, instead of worrying about the future, because tomorrow never comes.
"The Groundhog Forever" is a delightfully odd and curious short novel about two New York film students who get trapped in a daylong time loop on Tuesday April 27 in early 2000s Manhattan. Of course, this happens to be a day when they watch the film "Groundhog Day" and meet Bill Murray in a film class. It's like the inseparable friends--a woman nicknamed "Thing 1," and a man called "Thing 2," but both queer--are stuck in a sequel version of the Murray movie in real life: no matter what they do, they wake up in the same way on the same day.
The book is goofy and upsetting and existentially insightful in equal measure. It's about our fascination with the famous at a distance, and how our interest shifts with close contact. It's about how artists always wish they had more time to create, when it's not clear how limitless, infinite time would change the outcome. It's about that intense, platonic love that can form between two friends who share the same passions--and the particular kind of pain those relationships can cause. Henry Hoke also smartly links this repeating Tuesday to another seemingly endless Tuesday in New York, September 11, when everything changed, yet the perpetual wars feel like different versions of the same thing. Ultimately, just like the original film, it's about the potential of a constant present--what happens when people really start living in the moment, instead of worrying about the future, because tomorrow never comes.
June 2, 2021
After watching the movie Groundhog Day and meeting its starring actor Bill Murray, two NYC film students find themselves in a time loop of their own, and are forced to navigate the same day
over and over again.
The presentation of this story, with its short segments, staccato style writing, and quirky air, was fresh and unique, but it also created a disconnect between the story and this reader. It is a very
niche tale, a strange journey that was interesting but not very impactful.
This ARC was provided by WTAW Press, in exchange for an honest review.
over and over again.
The presentation of this story, with its short segments, staccato style writing, and quirky air, was fresh and unique, but it also created a disconnect between the story and this reader. It is a very
niche tale, a strange journey that was interesting but not very impactful.
This ARC was provided by WTAW Press, in exchange for an honest review.
December 15, 2024
I’ve already ordered my next Henry Hoke book. Open Throat solidified me as a fan immediately. And though this book was not on par with Open Throat, it still blanketed me in the familiar feeling of reading Hoke — ideas that disturb your thoughts long after finishing the book. This one has already provoked conversations akin to “would you rather?” when all possible scenarios are both a blessing and a curse.
September 3, 2023
A fun, hilarious, and touching adventure. I love the strange worlds Hoke creates and his poetic prose.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews