Hovel - by Ailsa Ross (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In this debut novel, a young woman in the Rocky Mountains, separated from the ancestral rhythms of her home in Scotland, turns to ancient rituals to find solace and connection. With shades of Olga Tokarczuk, Ali Smith, and Rachel Cusk, Hovel is a book for those fascinated by female interiority.

Homesickness takes many forms. Alone in the mountains because of her husband's job, occupied by little more than online video captioning she calls "kitten work," our narrator becomes fascinated by the not-long-gone life of her Scottish ancestors, a time when the lamplighter took the night off for the full moon, girls bathed their faces in morning dew, and people sang to the seals.

Her husband, however, is unsure of the emotional efficacy of cooking by candlelight, peeing in the woods, and writing vexed letters to the mayor about the birds living in the doomed aspens behind their apartment building. Especially because the letters are being read, out loud, at the town meetings attended by unimpressed neighbours. But our narrator is bewitched by the liminality of memory.

In a novel of compelling poetic precision and depth, Ross captures the lengths we go to for connection when we're alone, following threads of personal history and fascination to conclusions one can only reach when there's too much time on one's hands and it's too cold to go outside.

Review Quotes

"This book will stay with me for the longest time. Perhaps I'll pass it on to my descendants. Yes, perhaps this book will help someone in the future understand what true connection is. The protagonist's efforts to overcome the feeling of homesickness and dislocation through small chores and more than anything else: through her senses, observations and willingness to connect to all things living, is so strong. There's a stamina, a subtleness, a poetic beauty and a great sense of timing at play here. On top of that Ailsa Ross shows a strong observational talent - and a lovely sense of humour. And sadness. All in all, I just loved Hovel. I just loved everything about it, and on top of that I promised myself that one day--soon--I'll rent that cottage in Northern Scotland. I will just sit there in my 'hovel' and reconnect. It was a wonderful read, Ailsa Ross. Thank you."
--Dorthe Nors, author of A Line in the World

About the Author

AILSA ROSS writes about people, place, and art for Outside, Orion, the Guardian, the BBC, and others. She grew up in the north of Scotland and lives in the Canadian Badlands. This is her first novel.