The orchard

The bucolic, self-sequestered life of a mother and daughter is unceremoniously interrupted by a curious stranger in Heller's lush latest (after Burn). Hayley, a celebrated professor and translator of Chinese poetry, retreats from public life to rural Vermont, where she homeschools her bookish seven-year-old, Frith, in their off-the-grid cabin. Haley chose the rustic setting to escape the burdens of her career and the pain of intimate relationships, and Frith, who narrates, is comfortable with the pastoral arrangement. Things change with an unexpected visit from Rosie Lattimore, a local weaver, who reintroduces Hayley and Frith to the pleasures of social interactions, the notion of fun, and the bounties of true friendship. The unhurried narrative is flush with themes of motherhood, family, the healing properties of poetry, and the kindness of strangers, and periodically flashes forward to Frith as an adult recalling her youth and the way Rosie opened new worlds to her and Hayley. Heller brings the setting to life with lyrical prose (winter icicles "extended their glass fingers," and pop-top cans of beer issue "sharp sighs"), and delivers an emotionally charged, heart-wrenching conclusion. Readers are in for a treat. Agent: David Halpern, David Halpern Literary. (Jan.)

A woman looks back at her complex childhood. What's to be gained from revisiting one's youth years later? That's a question that must be answered by Frith, the protagonist of this elliptical and moving novel. In the early pages, Heller reveals several things about Frith: She's pregnant and the father is "known but at this point immaterial"; she was raised by her mother, Hayley, a translator who focused on poets from the Tang Dynasty. Frith begins the remembering process by opening a locked maple chest, aware that "what I see could sear beyond hope of recovery." Much of the novel focuses on Hayley's bond with Rose Lattimore, a weaver who lives near them in Vermont. That doesn't mean this is a novel about Frith reckoning with a romantic relationship had by her mother; of Rose, she states, "Was she gay or bi? I honestly never knew." Instead, Hayley and Rose seem to form an innate bond over living life on their own terms. "What Hayley did to find a through line was to have me," Frith realizes at one point. This is a book where fathers are mostly absent; there's a passing mention of Frith's father being "sick in a way that could unintentionally harm others." Where this novel excels is in evoking a sense of revisiting the past and noticing the things that both were and were not said. It's no coincidence that Haley is a translator. And it's not much of a leap to consider this novel the story of Frith's translation of her own childhood memories into a form she can better understand as an adult contemplating parenthood. The novel is nominally intimate in scope, featuring only a handful of characters, but it also reckons with big ideas and impossible questions. A powerful look at interpersonal bonds, familial and otherwise. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.