The first thing I’m going to tell you about Michelle Huneven’s new novel, Bug Hollow, is: Don’t read the jacket copy — or any preview of the book, if you can help it — because they tend to give away too much. Instead, pick it up and just start reading, and let Huneven introduce you to the joyful, sad, imperfect and infinitely human Samuelson family.
Huneven’s previous novel, Search, chronicled the search committee of a Unitarian Universalist Church on its quest to find a new minister. Bug Hollow is a sprawling family saga that similarly highlights the author’s talent for depicting how real people relate to one another in real life.
The novel opens in 1970s Northern California, when high school graduate Ellis Samuelson takes a summer road trip with friends. He ends up meeting a girl and staying awhile at a ramshackle rental known as Bug Hollow. Ellis’s mom, Sibyl, is furious, but she’s always been the prickly type. His dad, Phil, is less concerned, but he’s easy-going by nature. Sisters Sally and Katie have their own reactions, based on birth order and personality. And what follows is a sprawling menagerie of characters that weave into and around the Samelson family through the course of their lives.
Huneven’s novel reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, with each chapter highlighting a different family member or relationship. Settings range from the author’s lushly conjured native California to the deserts of Saudi Arabia. And the range of emotion is just as expansive.
“Funny how the days you weep, you can also have the fullest, deepest laughs,” Huneven writes. Like life, this novel has it all.
