I’ve dog-eared so many pages in honor of vivid prose...Hypnotic and glowing, Mr. Splitfoot insists on its own ghostly presence. Memory, either of dead people or of books read once upon a time, obeys only the rules it chooses.
Hunt refuses to let any conclusions solidify in her wry prose...Turned around and around in these woods, you won’t always know where you are, but there’s a rare pleasure in this blend of romance and phantoms.
Although Samantha Hunt turns out the creepy imagery and Christianity, suspense runs short and horror is too often undercut by an infuriating structure that serves symbolism over story...the writing seems to aim for a Cormac McCarthy-ish American gothic spareness, but the simplicity it attains is only superficial
...an intriguing mystery with clues, suspense, enigmas galore, and an exhilarating, witty, poignant paean to the unexplainable, the unsolvable, the irreducibly mysterious.
Hunt's packed prose writhes with hallucinatory detail. At her best, she lurches from lyricism to cynicism in short, declarative sentences...Hunt seems to get lost in her story at times, repeating plot points and revelations...for all its writhing antics, a deeply normative book.
Hunt maintains a dark and disturbing atmosphere throughout this intriguing, well-drawn Gothic, creating a terrain that’s familiar and yet alien and unnerving at the same time.
Occasionally I felt the connections Hunt was making — between religion, the afterlife, New York history, meteorites and other topics — were slightly forced...The emotional connections between Hunt’s key characters are authentic, as is the unusual world she creates at Love of Christ!, and her writing is lively and funny.
Mr. Splitfoot is also a deeply humane and even feminist book. Despite its gothic and ghostly undertones, the female characters are not, in the usual fashion, punished for making mistakes... the novel seems deliberately committed to offering new endings to strong, unconventional women.
