In Sara Mesa’s warm, nuanced novel Among the Hedges, a friendship blossoms, defying cultural expectations ... a daring, sympathetic novel about a friendship between two people whom society would prefer to keep apart.
Intriguing Spanish writer Sara Mesa...continues to explore highly charged power dynamics ... Obvious or predictable could never describe Mesa's narrative here. Her sly hints...are clearly meant to manipulate readers in various directions, right or wrong, truth or not ... Mesa, meanwhile, prods, enables, challenges, maybe even misleads. Satisfaction—of sorts—arrives in Mesa's concluding 'Part Two,' which shrewdly reveals the bittersweet outcome beyond the hedges.
The prose, simple and beautiful, flies by before we realize we know nothing of these characters, aside from Soon’s inability to fit in at school and her beloved brother’s recent departure, as well as Old Man’s love of birds, fraying suits and Nina Simone ... Details are mysteriously unimportant in the larger story. The logistics of Soon’s school absences are accounted for. The whereabouts of Old Man’s past progressions and his demeanor are never directly named. These details do not need to be laid out, because Mesa’s writing is tight enough to note the reader’s questions, but direct the story where it needs to go for her desired effect, which is a story about uncertainty in humanity. The text constantly raises the question 'what do we want from each other?' without providing an answer. I think that’s the point; even those who feel unable to connect can still make meaningful connections. It’s not so much the struggle for understanding, or even being understood, but finding moments of peace in a world that can be so cruel.
Mesa neatly presents these two characters and enough of their circumstances to give a good sense of each; she's particularly strong on Soon's adolescent uncertainty about her identity and place, and her fumbling towards maturity ... Mesa is particularly good at teenage inarticulateness ... The now widely ingrained uneasiness about any dynamics between a young girl and a (much) older man spending a great time alone together looms over the whole book—deftly used by Mesa also in how things play out, as readers' misgivings about the situation mirror those of the other adults in the story. Cleverly, the very simpleness of the Old Man character complicates the scenario—though he is, as is, arguably too perfect a character for the story Mesa has conceived. In Soon, on the other hand, Mesa captures female adolescence exceptionally well and convincingly. Among the Hedges is a well-crafted short novel with two well-drawn and very different outsider-protagonists, provocative in how it both defies and confirms a variety of reader- (and society's) expectations.
... engrossing ... Mesa writes in brief bursts throughout, carefully avoiding formulaic plot developments as her characters spend more time together. The consequences of their encounters unfold in an ingenious final act set one year later, which is both unsettling and touching. This is difficult to put down.
