Review of Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven

Bug Hollow tracks the Samuelson family from an idyllic mid-1970s Northern California summer through a tragedy that upends already-tenuous relationships. Various points of view and side characters sometimes make the story meander as Huneven explores fissures that stretch through decades, but I loved the unconventional bonds, chosen-family elements, and vivid details that place the reader in points in time.

When Sally Samuelson was eight, her idolized golden-boy older brother Ellis went missing after his high school graduation. The family located him in Bug Hollow, a Northern California community where he was living his best life in a last-gasp counterculture house with a free-spirit of a new girlfriend. After pushing him to return home before heading to college, he headed to campus and died in a freak accident.

The family reels from the loss, feeling and casting blame, turning within themselves, and existing in a fog of grief.

But the reader is also privy to the point of view of Julia, Ellis's girlfriend, who is facing unexpected news--she's pregnant. Ellis's family takes in the baby and Eva becomes a treasure to them, a gift they never expected.

Bug Hollow spans decades, tracking grief and then the life paths of Ellis's sisters (particularly young Sally), his parents, Julia, and adopted Eva. Lives intersect unexpectedly, disappointments and shortfalls become clear, secrets emerge, and joy is sometimes elusive. The strongest bonds between characters aren't those within the nuclear family, and this was one of my favorite aspects.

Phil is a supportive and relaxed dad, in contrast to Sibyl, the mother of the Samuelson clan, who isn't very patient, frequently seems irritated and even revolted by her daughters, and often makes critical comments. Phil travels worldwide for his job, and his more appealing personality and our peek into his viewpoint led me to feel more forgiving toward his absences and his mistakes than I did toward Sybil with her determined focus on herself (and her own dalliance, which we don't have the benefit of watching grow and develop). Sybil is a giving teacher but is otherwise an unsympathetic character, alcoholic and bitter, and it is specifically pointed out that her deadly health crisis occurs after she refuses to be screened for cancer for an irresponsibly long time.

The early portion of the novel wonderfully immerses the reader in the Northern California of the 1970s. Viewing the family's story through different members' points of view allowed for rich context through varied perspectives, but this also felt somewhat jumpy as the story built. Sally's frank observations and kind heart are the stars of the early chapters of the book, but her older years (in which she seems lost, without her younger passion for art, and also perplexingly taken in with an unpromising married man in rural New England for an extended period) seemed to stretch the focus and pacing of the novel.

We zigzag to spend page time with intriguing side characters (Yvette, with whom Phil has a very brief affair; Mrs. Wright, the former principal of Sybil's school), which adds to the sometimes-disjointed feeling of the story, but I loved Huneven's gift for placing us in vividly set scenes of the times, and for the sprawling interconnected characters and their caring for each other.

More from Michelle Huneven

Huneven is also the author of the novels Search, Off Course, Blame, Jamesland, and Round Rock.

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