Sarah finds it hard to face the truth. She believes herself incapable of writing successfully as she once had, despite her publisher’s encouragement. She seems weary in her marriage, despite the reconciliation. She finds it difficult to analyze her relationship with her estranged daughter. She meets a man on the subway who invites her to St. Ivo, his son’s “restaurant,” and who looks into her soul and assures her she is a good mother. When faced with an invitation for her husband and her to spend a weekend with formerly close friends, she resorts to lies to get her through. It is during this weekend, however, that she starts to reassess her life when she realizes how others have suffered and lied to hide pain and disappointment. Joanna Hershon invites her readers to come along on Sarah’s investigative journey to find out what can heal a broken relationship and how to adjust to the loss that it brings.

Over the course of a weekend, two couples reckon with the long-hidden secrets that have shaped their families, in a charged, poignant novel of motherhood and friendship

Although this book didn't exactly draw me in, I still enjoyed it. I found the writing style to be very descriptive and that kept me reading.

A piercingly poignant novel from a writer who has a gift for getting to the heart of loss. Wonderfully rendered characters in a tight timeframe which delivers a haunting whallop about the secrets we keep from those we love...and from ourselves.

My Thoughts: I liked St. Ivo very much, but don’t think it will be for everyone. This is a dark story of a couple who have lost their only child, an adult, in a way that few others could understand. The two, Sarah and Matthew, have struggled with each other and how to handle their grief. On the eve of going to spend a weekend with friends they haven’t seen in years, the two are mugged in a NYC park. This lets something loose in Sarah, and we watch her crumble ver the course of a weekend. St. Ivo dove deep into Sarah’s grief and how it affected everyone she came in contact with: her husband, friends, strangers. At times I found her a little annoying, but more than anything I felt pity for her. I know my description sounds morose, but I did enjoy this sad, short novel. The loss was so much different than I’d expected and Hershon pulled at my heart as she exposed a type of grief I’d not read before.
Note: I received a copy of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Joanna Hershon’s latest novel, "St. Ivo," packs a whole lot of life into 224 pages. In a stream of beautifully crafted but unobtrusive sentences, Hershon juxtaposes the inner and outer worlds of her protagonist Sarah, a middle-aged filmmaker whose early success has withered but whose imaginative powers are still in overdrive. Her perception of the world around her and the events of her life have led her to a point of not-so-quiet desperation, pushing her to the cusp of the novel’s dramatic pivot.

St. Ivo, in addition to being the patron saint of lawyers, is also the patron saint of abandoned children. In Sarah’s case, it is her daughter Leda who has abandoned her parents. Still married, Sarah and Matthew had met in college and had Leda in their mid-twenties. Somehow – and Sarah cannot help but blame herself – Leda’s childhood went awry, and ultimately Leda has chosen completely to sever herself from her parents, not even allowing them to know where she lives.

Severance is a central theme. Sarah and Matthew have recently reconciled after two years of separation. Also, after her best friend Kiki had moved from Brooklyn to LA, Sarah stopped answering Kiki’s calls and responding to texts. Now, at forty-four, Kiki and her husband Arman have had a daughter and moved to upstate New York. Kiki and Armand have reached out for a reunion, to reconnect, and for Sarah and Matthew to meet the new baby.

The novel unfolds over the course of a long weekend, from Friday to Monday. On the day before their departure, Sarah has a conversation with a mysterious older man on the subway who draws her out and calls her “a good mother” as he exits the train. Later that night Sarah and Matthew are mugged, which gives Sarah “a more concrete reason to be wary beyond the day-to-day national news.” Sarah’s lack of confidence has her doubting her every move and constantly apologizing for what she sees as her missteps. At one point, she compares herself to a golem, “disguised as a well-maintained formerly creative person who had a taste for fine textiles and cocktails and expensive organic hair dye, but [who is] actually a lifeless block of clay, with stones for eyes and a big gaping hole for a mouth.”

The extreme tension among Sarah’s divergent impulses animates the events of the weekend in the country. Sarah’s confrontational, subversive, and often uncontrolled instincts are brought into relief against the foil of the other characters’ weaknesses: the unexpected, crass houseguest Heather, Arman’s shame at his lack of success, Matthew’s passive-aggressiveness. Sarah upsets each in turn by her boldness, ranging from recklessness to blurted, bald-faced truths, to calm, elegantly sparse confessions. The novel often reads like a mystery with Sarah’s impulsiveness putting the reader on edge, and then there’s the question of ulterior motives. Is meeting their baby the real reason for Kiki’s and Arman’s invitation? Leda, the absent one, paradoxically serves as the gravitational force at the center of the novel, having blown apart and drawn back together these characters and even Sarah herself.

Hershon’s plot is well-designed, her characters alive, and her prose a real pleasure. Sarah remembers getting her first pair of glasses in the fifth grade:

The case was blue. She wore them on the trip home. While sitting in the back seat of the car, she looked out the window. It was as if the world had suddenly announced itself in every leaf on every tree. She hadn’t realized that one could actually see the shapes of leaves, that it was even possible from a distance. The ordinary view was crystalline suddenly and all too much. She remembered now the sound of her father’s gravelly voice and the static on the radio; she remembered returning the glasses to their blue suede case. She’d closed her eyes for the rest of the trip. This, she realized, was how she felt just then.

The world is too much with her. And the obscurities of the story—why does Leda need severance so badly? What really happened between this mother and daughter?—stay with you after finishing the book, not as a limitation of the narrative but as mystery to be contemplated.

An unusual dnf from me but fans of literary fiction should give it a try. Sarah's at sea in her work, her marriage, and in life in general. She is estranged from her daughter (which led to problems in her marriage). She's mugged. She meets a mysterious stranger. Sigh. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Interesting writing but it lost me on characters.

Wow, does this small book pack a punch. This an introspective book that surrounds two couples over a few days. These couples have been close for a long time, but have lost touch over the years. They come together over one weekend to catch up, but they are both hiding deep secrets and some motives may not be sincere.

Sarah and Matt are in their late 40’s, and while they love each other deeply, you know from the beginning they are struggling with something. Early on in this book, Sarah and Matt are mugged and Sarah’s phone is stolen. She is visibly upset and we find out this is the last connection to her daughter. Throughout the story you get flashbacks to when their daughter Leda was younger, but the author does a wonderful job keeping exactly what happened to her.

We then meet Kiki and later her husband, they have just a baby in their 40’s and going through all the emotions of being brand new parents. They too are also hiding a secret and maybe the key why they reached out to Sarah and Matt.

While the emphasis is on Sarah and Matt in this tale, there is a so much to unpack between these couples and their tenuous friendship. I found myself gobbling every word Hershon wrote. This is not a light read at all, but even with all the reflection, this story moves and will keep you reading. Highly recommend this read.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sarah is in the middle of everything. The middle of her career hoping it will not be the end, middle of her recently repaired marriage and in the midst of finding her daughter. She is having a journey that will change her life and is causing her to over analyze and panic on every level.

I didn't particularly enjoy reading this book. It felt like the details dragged on and were sometimes unnecessarily wordy. I found it unrelatable and I felt that it was over-written, without true substance.

Read the quite excellent 𝘚𝘵. 𝘐𝘷𝘰 by Joanna Hershon. It's centred on a woman named Sarah, a one-time filmmaker, married to Matthew. The story takes place over a long weekend away at friends they lost touch with and are now visiting after eight years. At the heart of Sarah's life is her vanished grown daughter of 24 who has chosen to cut ties with her parents. A novel about relationships – with friends, partners, children – and about coming to a begrudging understanding and acceptance of the choices we have made in our lives; and how we really cannot control everything in our lives. Shot through with summer heat and and the menace of reality.

Highly recommended.

The description of this book sounds a little all over the place, and that's exactly how I felt about this book. Not really sure what the chance encounter on the train had to do with anything, and the main character is not a likeable character. The book is slow in parts, and the ending is unsatisfying. Just not my type of book. Thanks to NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is probably a perfectly fine book for many but it wasn't one I enjoyed reading. It reminded very much of those contemporary movies set in large cities where the people in it go on and on and on about every little thing that happens to them, repeatedly beating every occurrence and decision to death. Apologies to the author for saying this but I just couldn't keep reading, hoping that something interesting would happen.

Mike and Sarah have grown apart from their old friends Oman and Kiki. They spend the weekend trying to reconnect, but everything seems a little off. Sarah spends the whole weekend acting out, as she doesn't seem to be happy with her life. Nobody else is very happy either, because getting older is complicated. This novel isn't much fun.

I simply couldn’t relate to this book. I felt that it was over-written, the author trying to hard to make it arty, but without any real substance.

The weirdness of the plot created a miasma of mystery and darkness, but I wasn’t able to connect.

Sarah finds it hard to face the truth. She believes herself incapable of writing successfully as she once had, despite her publisher’s encouragement. She seems weary in her marriage, despite the reconciliation. She finds it difficult to analyze her relationship with her estranged daughter. She meets a man on the subway who invites her to St. Ivo, his son’s “restaurant,” and who looks into her soul and assures her she is a good mother. When faced with an invitation to her husband and her to spend a weekend with formerly close friends, she resorts to lies to get her through. It is during this weekend, however, that she starts to reassess her life when she realizes how others have suffered and lied to hide pain and disappointment. Joanna Hershon invites her readers to come along on Sarah’s investigative journey to find out what can heal a broken relationship and how to adjust to the loss that it brings.

I didn’t finish this novel. I found that the story just wasn’t really propelled by the characters and I found myself putting it down and now really wanting to pick it back up.

The synopsis made the book sound mysterious and exciting -- I wanted to settle in and enjoy this book. However, the more I read, I realized that the description was the best part. The characters were two dimensional, cliches. . . And not very likable. The story meandered here and there, seemingly with no sense of direction. It moved slowly, with long, boring sections I barely go through. But then the ending was rushed and unsatisfying. I didn't enjoy the book and, therefore, wouldn't recommend it to friends and fellow readers.

I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read St. Ivo.

The description sounded great, but I couldn't get into this one. Slow start and unfortunately I don't feel compelled to see it through. Not finishing.

St. Ivo is a very well-written novel by a clearly talented writer. I haven't experienced Joanna Herson's previous work, but I do find her writing to be exquisite. The reason I haven't rated this book higher is that the main character isn't all that relatable; despite her intelligence and other good qualities, she seems to irritate those around her (and with good reason). If we had more of an ensemble cast, I could probably overlook Sarah's shortcomings. But with the narrative so focused on her, I felt I occasionally needed a break. My other concern deals with the ending, which did not resolve as much as I'd hoped it would. Overall, I look forward to more of Herson's writing even if St. Ivo was a bit underwhelming for my tastes.

Great book. I was able to read this over a weekend. It’s about two couples who have not seen each other for quite some time, get together in upstate New York. Both have faced a lot of tragedy and changes throughout the years. It was very well written, very believable story, with great characters that will stay with me for a long time. It was a heartbreaking story, yet it made me realize sometimes in the middle of our worst tragedy, there is still hope. Thank you so much for this advance copy. I will continue to follow this author with great anticipation .