The narrator’s troubled mind is laid bare on every page through Goldblatt’s unflinching gaze—there’s little glamorous about Denny by the time her journey leaves her half-naked and caked in mud, but she is vividly real. And the pain of witnessing a loved one’s slow degradation is rendered excruciating enough for us to believe Denny would prefer the physical hardships of repairing a torn roof or scaling a watchtower in a rainstorm over having to say good-bye to her father. Grief can do that ... For readers, though, Hard Mouth is all reward.
Goldblatt’s writing is sharp and to the point, getting us into the mind of a narrator that at times seems almost sociopathic in her lack of empathy and desire for isolation ... By removing Denny from society and taking her away from the immediate reality of her father’s illness and coming death, Goldblatt explores new ways to deal with grief, and through moments like this, subtly shows the reader that Denny is not unfeeling. In turn, we are able to empathize with our seemingly unempathetic narrator ... Goldblatt’s writing is smart, witty, and engaging. Denny’s narration is quick-paced, making for a captivating read, and Goldblatt successfully and with care shows us the complicated and oftentimes confusing manifestations of grief.
Told in first-person, Denny’s stream of consciousness is contrastingly critical and vaudevillian. Goldblatt’s prose thrives on pithy one-liners and lucid moments of defamiliarization. The humorous voice does wonders for the pacing, but at times Denny’s in-the-moment gags feel a bit too on the nose. It’s difficult to imagine anyone, even if creative enough to bring to life a Hollywood legend hallucination, being so sharp at every possible moment. Although, this consistent clarity is useful in terms of character development ... Hard Mouth manages an offbeat expedition while also bringing a one-of-a-kind dark humor to the page. Evading the predictable, Goldblatt wanders through the momentary and unanticipated emotions of knowing the worst is coming, and suggests that even if bad decisions are made along the way, there might be self awareness waiting on the other side.
... surprising and grimly funny ... a pithy and offbeat blend of cancer story and adventure tale ... Goldblatt is too original a stylist to succumb to the romantic tropes of a conventional wilderness narrative ... In Denny, Goldblatt creates an almost claustrophobic character study of a bleak, depressed, and selfish protagonist, deeply unlikeable to herself and thus virtually incapable of accepting any overtures of affection or friendship from loved ones and strangers alike. But Goldblatt keeps the pages turning with her incisive descriptions of Denny’s interior state, coupled with her ineptitude as an adventurer and her physical suffering as she experiences the rougher sides of roughing it ... What emerges is a portrait of protracted grief, the deep sorrow that usually comes with the event of someone’s death, but in this case comes preemptively and over an excruciatingly extended period. By the end, Hard Mouth leaves readers to consider the vast human question of how to justify going on living when death and suffering are all around.
In both plot and style, Hard Mouth feints and dodges. Denny’s short-lived seclusion, spent mostly on scoutlike expeditions, feels like a missed opportunity for a cleansing nervous breakdown, a confrontation with the anxieties that drove her to the woods in the first place. In crafting this novel about avoidance, Goldblatt elicits from the reader the same frustration Denny feels with her stilted post-adolescence ... Sometimes the narrative voice is almost too clever, but when Goldblatt’s on, she’s on ... Despite her slippery quality, I enjoyed Denny’s company; I was pulled through the book by a desire to know more about her ... if the book’s denouement ultimately left me wanting more, that isn’t a bad thing, not at all.
Through Denny’s process of evasion and invention of feeling, Goldblatt skillfully constructs a larger parable about empathy as the author blurs the boundary between care for the other and care for the self ... It’s fitting that the narrative voice demonstrates duality: detachment and sensitivity, warmth and self-indulgence. Goldblatt’s writing is both tender and linguistically textured; every sentence is its own acoustic experience. The effect leaves the reader rapt. Much can be said about the strength of Goldblatt’s prose ... Though the quality of the prose is consistent throughout, the story does sag in the middle. It’s a shortcoming that is neither surprising nor uncommon for a story of this nature ... Hard Mouth is as darkly funny as its characters, modulating between entertaining and disturbing tonal registers ... Contradictory through and through, Hard Mouth is a novel that may appear dispassionate, but it is an exceptionally complex text on the nature of empathy.
At times the novel can feel a bit directionless, which is fitting for Denny’s current status: things just seem to happen to Denny. She’s visited by animals and people and weather, all of which thwart her disengagement plan and eventually send her back to her father, changed by the woods. Goldblatt’s spare and illuminating language suits her protagonist, who spends a good deal of time lonely inside her own head and experience.
Goldblatt’s propulsive and beguiling debut tracks the story of a young woman searching for escape ... Denny’s story gains momentum early on, though the secondary characters too often come across as one-note, muddled shapes in the background. Still, this debut is a striking psychological portrait of despair.
There’s violence and cruelty, all of it matter-of-factly described, with Denny betraying little-to-no emotion about the circumstances she faces. By turns creepy and thought-provoking, this is a resonant debut about love, independence, and mourning.
