'Hex' follows a newly unemployed scientist, lovesick for her former mentor — but certain of her own inherent worth and her desire for beauty and joy.
comes largely from Nell's insistent belief that her life is priceless. Even at her lowest, she never doubts that she deserves beauty and joy, if she can find them. This is unusual in contemporary fiction. The past half-decade has seen a spike in oddball novels about brainy women in various states of crisis; think of Ottessa Moshfegh'sThese three novels succeed, in part, because their prose and protagonists are leached of joy. Dinerstein Knight inverts that strategy.
The pleasure of reading 'Hex' comes largely from Nell's insistent belief that her life is priceless. Even at her lowest, she never doubts that she deserves beauty and joy, if she can find them. Nell's devotion to aesthetic and poetic pleasure is also unusual in contemporary fiction — or, at least, in fictional portrayals of people who are not artists. Often, writers seem to lapse into the belief that beauty is ours to pursue. Dinerstein Knight does not make this mistake.
In another writer's hands, Nell might seem loopy, or like a manic pixie. Dinerstein Knight occasionally skates close to the latter edge. What saves her is her prose style, which oscillates between abstract, conversational, and straight-up weird. Take an early moment of Nell noticing her own body: she doesn't think about her weight, or face, or sexuality, but about"my skeleton's original fact." What does that mean? Who knows.
Nell's love of Joan is contagious. So is her love of lab work. Both are such clear sources of delight for Nell that it is impossible, as a reader, not to root for her to get back to science — and, of course, back to Joan. More to the point, it is impossible not to hope Joan and Nell will get together. Dinerstein Knight offers no reason to believe in Joan's marriage. Barry is transparently terrible. Nell is adorable.
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