I ended up DNF’ing this one about 30% in unfortunately. It is one I want to try again in the future but I think it was just too big brained for me right now and I just wasn’t interested in the authors dad’s manuscript at all :(

It's hard to review this book. I absolutely adore Samantha Hunt. Her writing is stunning and with this book its no exception. But I really struggled to stay engaged here. Maybe I should have listened to the audiobook to get through the slower parts. I might try it again that way. Not my favorite book but still definitely one of my favorite authors.

Not for me. Right from the start it was a bit too rambly and unconnected. I can see why it would appeal to others but it just wasn't the right book for me,

Samantha Hunt is very much someone I already thought of as like…knowing too many things, and this book is a great showpiece for that.

It’s a weaving together of:
1. Her dad’s partially written novel that she found
2. Her constant running commentary on said novel
3. Some short essays, drawing from her own life and also six million outside sources (the references section of this is monstrous)
4. Lots of close reading and discussion about just like…the oddness of language.

My full attention ebbed and flowed a little over the course of this but I was always impressed and often very very moved.

I know of Samantha Hunt for her wayward short stories and I was interested to see how she approaches memoir. This is the sort of book that one falls in love with, the kind of book' one wished Maggie Nelson wrote after "The Argonauts," the book that "The Crying Book" thought it was. This is all form, form, form. Not the kind of book one can just write. I hope it gets more attention than it has!

I did not know what I was getting myself into with Samantha Hunt’s The Unwritten Book: An Investigation, but I am so very glad that I was lucky enough to receive a Netgalley ARC. Hunt’s writing is thoughtful, interesting, intelligent, wandering… and in my opinion, well worth the read.

Although Hunt is probably best known for her fiction work, such as Belletriste’s pick The Dark Dark, this book is mostly nonfiction. I say “mostly” because interspersed throughout the book are excerpts of Samantha’s deceased father’s unfinished book. In addition, this book reads more like a collection of loosely related essays/musings than a more traditional narrative non-fiction book where each chapter builds on what came before. Hunt’s book could literally be read in any order, except for the excerpts of her father’s book. This book, which analyzes the writing from the partial book that Papa Hunt left behind, experiences Samantha had with both her father and her own experiences parenting her children, and general musings/information, is interesting. It feels like spending time with a friend — a very educated, empathetic, slightly lost friend. This friend is trying to navigate her way through losing a parent, being a parent, and being a person.

And really… aren’t we all? I highly, highly recommend.

I had heard quite a bit about Samantha Hunt before receiving this book on NetGalley -- mainly because of her novel, The Seas -- so I was very excited to read The Unwritten Book. Unfortunately, I couldn't even finish the first chapter. I found Hunt's writing style to be needlessly complicated and flowery and I struggled to understand why she had written this book. It struck me as a memoir written by someone who has not actually led a particularly interesting life. And the non-personal sections were so confused and jumbled that I had trouble following any particular threads. Each time Hunt would mention something actually interesting she would immediately move away from that topic -- leaving me unsatisfied. I really had high hopes for this and for Hunt but perhaps her fiction is better than her nonfiction.

I thought this book was brilliant. It's also very, very hard to talk about. The ideas and the language are so recursive and so penetrating that it's hard to even say what form this book takes, or what it's about. In the end I decided that this is a book of essays about Samantha Hunt's father, but that's like looking at a lemon tree and saying it's an acorn.

Whatever it is, exactly, though, it made me think differently: about language, about sanity, about personal narrative. I expect to return to it again and again.

I received an eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Gorgeous beautifully written book, vivid, funny, charming and completely engrossing. I love Hunt's work, and this book seems to me to be her very best.

Fantastic. Absolutely as revelatory a formal experiment as THE ARGONAUTS or THE RINGS OF SATURN. A story within a story, all true; a ghost story without any ghosts, per se. There's a ton packed into this book, enough to power several dinner parties' worth of conversation.

I am not an essay-collection fan, but I loved Samantha Hunt's "The Seas" so decided to give this one a try. While it wasn't for me, I found a lot of the essays interesting and unique. Will purchase for the library.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. The author is a novelist who is obsessed, inspired and shaped by the great books she’s read. After her father’s death, she finds several chapters of a book that he had started. Through this unfinished novel the author can expand on his life as the author sprinkles in numerous footnotes about her father, herself and her family. It’s a thrilling experiment of a book that moves in so many unexpected and thoughtful ways.

“A beautiful, inventive collection shot through with wildness and grace." I literally couldn't have described this book more perfectly. For lovers of Joan Didion and similar styles of essayists.

The Unwritten Book is kind of a memoir, with author Samantha Hunt describing her life and her family and looking for hidden patterns in the influences that shaped her. This is highly literary — with Hunt often quoting from a broad range of novelists — but the author also draws heavily from art and film and music (even a relatably engaging essay on One Direction), getting to the essence of what makes us all unwritten works. This does have the feeling of an experimental project — which may not have universal appeal — but I found Hunt to be thoughtful and likeable and it did work for me. Rounded up to four stars.