It isn’t a mystery, yet in many ways, Jill McCorkle’s Hieroglyphics builds like one as characters appear, slowly reveal more of their pasts and secrets and eventually expose their connections and how the story fits together. Overlapping memories—of the things one tries to bury or make sense of—create layers of meaning for the characters and their children, whose voices compose the story with a range of experiences and perspectives. The prose is magnetic, drawing you in and holding your attention as questions slowly turn into answers ... As the parental figures struggle with their histories, choices and actions, it is through the lens of the children that these secrets find power and meaning. This echo, this sense of connectedness, of how we care for and hurt each other, gives the novel a clear resonance.
... characteristic grace ... McCorkle is an insightful, skillful writer and these characters have led complex lives. She takes her time and lets them unpack their baggage slowly, a piece at a time. So when McCorkle suddenly speeds to and through the finish, with Jason—our least known character—making and revealing a major discovery, along with Lil’s revelations and what some may consider the quick end of the novel, is McCorkle suggesting that this is what happens with our lives? We think we’ll have time to make decisions, to work something out, but then, surprise! it’s over and we’re gone.
In her vibrant, engaging fiction, Jill McCorkle has given voice to characters on both sides of the divide between professionals and the essential workers who sustain them ... McCorkle’s art lies in chronicling the many minor episodes that build one person’s unique life ... though Hieroglyphics is self-contained, it will be a richer story for readers already familiar with some of these characters ... The tone of Hieroglyphics is dreamier and more interior than that of McCorkle’s previous novel ... a generous, humane writer.
Demonstrating her widely recognized skill at creating memorable stories out of the stuff of daily life, McCorkle's empathy for a quartet of unassuming but appealing characters provides the foundation for a novel whose drama is modest, but whose insight is deep ... Jill McCorkle is an unfussy writer whose storytelling skill almost gives the impression she's simply eavesdropping on her character's lives. It's that quiet talent that makes Hieroglyphics a novel whose appeal will only enlarge in the reader's mind with the passage of time.
Each of the characters is fully rounded and, at turns, funny and warm, forgetful and deeply wounded. The frenetic chaos of the single mother and problem child are counterpointed with the elegiac tone of the couple in old age ... [McCorkle] lets the story unspool slowly and in great accreting detail ... This trope of hidden identities and family secrets gives the story its bumps and jolts. For all its easygoing pace, the plot has moments as brutal as the accidents that take the parents’ lives and as touching as the scene, late in the novel, when the truth spills out unexpectedly for everyone, including this reader ... The real joy of Hieroglyphics is its intricacy, the pieces of four stories assembled into a mosaic of love and pain and redemption. Whether in Lil’s first-person epistolary account or the others’ accounts in third person, the plain and elegant style pulls the reader through its shifts and counterpoints. You emerge bedazzled, blinking in the bright sunlight of now and carrying the shards of their experiences in your heart.
... a powerful evocation of loss and yearning ... With masterful skill, McCorkle weaves among time periods and points of view ... McCorkle offers a poignant meditation on the timeless question: is there existence beyond the grave? Her metaphors expand her reach beyond the simple clichés that our lives are a blink in time, and her tale dramatizes how attaining meaningful understanding has always been the true challenge between wife and husband, parent and child. McCorkle testifies to the ageless nobility of human beings who want the next generation to do better. A deeply moving and insightful triumph.
... engrossing ... through Lil’s voice, McCorkle finds an elegant mix of wistfulness and appreciation for life ... Throughout, McCorkle weaves a powerful narrative web, with empathy for her characters and keen insight on their motivations. This is a gem.
Four characters take turns narrating what at first appears to be a rather aimless accretion of vignettes. On closer reading, however, the ingenious structure of this novel reveals itself ... Death permeates this starkly honest tale, unleavened by McCorkle’s usual humor ... Gathers layers like a snowball racing downhill before striking us in the heart with blunt, icy force.
