Beneficence Review Round-Up
The reviews for Beneficence continue to roll in. Here’s a round-up of what some critics are saying about this powerful novel:
“The novel’s midcentury pastoral setting seems to distance it from the conventional pessimism of contemporary fiction… What impresses most is the patient, unforced manner with which [Hall] delineates her story of tragedy and gradual renewal… The counterweight to the grief that besets Beneficence is the profound satisfaction the Senters take from their daily labor on their land. This is also a finely observed novel of chores and routines and seasons, and of the sense of agency that can be reclaimed through the ‘covenant’ of work. As organically as it traveled to heartbreak, Beneficence progresses to the place of wisdom that lies beyond it, where we learn that a home is part of the ‘vast world of innocence and harm,’ not an island beyond it.”
“Beneficence is one of the best novels I’ve read all year, the perfect antidote to troubled times, beautifully composed and lyrically told. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.”
“Powerful…Hall’s meticulous prose convincingly captures the daily realities—sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel—of agricultural life, and offers insight into the ways calamity fractures family bonds…readers will be rewarded.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is a special book, nearly perfect. It is a story that lingers, and one that will remain with me for the remainder of my time in this world.”
“A quiet gem of a first novel. The author’s lyrical prose and stark portrayal of grief and guilt…is conveyed so movingly this story is hard to put down. With language poetic in its cadence and capable of seamlessly transporting our minds and emotions to another place and time, this accomplished debut will be welcomed by readers of authors such as Willa Cather, Alice Munro, Amy Tan, or Lisa See.”
—Library Journal
“A powerful story of love and loss and endurance… Remind[s] all readers that love, memories and stories, and indeed language itself, can have transcendent, radiant, beneficent power—even over death.”—New York Journal of Books
—New York Journal of Books
“Meredith Hall’s austere and luminous debut novel... is hewn, sinewy, with moments of electrifying beauty and grace.”
“[A] delicate, poignant novel…Spare but decked with moments of crystalline beauty, the book’s descriptions of farming the Maine countryside are authentic and enchanting. There are no ostentatious displays, and so the novel’s magnificence sneaks up in the same unassuming way that autumn sunlight spills across harvested fields, that sound breaks the silence of a heavy snow, and that the hidden barbs of loss present themselves across the years…[A] gorgeous and moving new novel.”
—Foreword Reviews (Starred Review)
“These voices from the past speak so clearly to our time, at a moment when many of us wonder whether we’ll lose the things that we consider blessings… Beneficence is a quiet but steady book, one that echoes ancient and important rhythms.”
“Beneficence is a novel that lingers, tucking details into its heavy folds…The weight of ache and grace that anchors [Hall’s] writing is still firmly lodged.”
—The Arts Fuse
"[Hall's] debut novel, Beneficence, brings readers achingly close to these ultimately existential questions of goodness and love by focusing on a single family’s unspooling... Beneficence is a glorious book, its joy as quietly beautiful as the tragedy at its center echoes loudly through the lives of its characters. Hall acknowledges that each life is very small, on its own, but that the love we each bear for one another is immense, our capacity for it endless."
—Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram
"[One of] the best reviewed books of the week.”
—LitHub (Rated “Rave”)
Pre-order Beneficence here