Hex

Hex

Title:

Hex

Author:

Knight, Rebecca Dinerstein, author.

Personal Author:

Knight, Rebecca Dinerstein, author.

ISBN:

9781984877376

Physical Description:

215 pages ; 22 cm

Abstract:

"Nell Barber, an expelled PhD candidate in Biological Science, is exploring the fine line between poison and antidote. Her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas, preoccupies her thoughts. Nell frequently finds herself standing in the doorway to Joan's office despite herself. Surrounded by an ex, a best friend, a boyfriend, and a husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. The six are each burdened by desire and ambition, and as they all cross each other's paths on the university campus, the tensions created set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak. Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study and begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love. In a dazzling and unforgettable voice, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight has written a spellbinding novel of emotional and intellectual intensity"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Women scientists -- Fiction.

Women college teachers -- Fiction.

Poisonous plants -- Fiction.

Research -- Fiction.

Interpersonal relations -- Fiction.

Genre:

Campus fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Belmont	Book	FICTION KNIGHT	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Broad Rock	Book	FICTION KNIGHT	Searching... Unknown
Searching... East End	Book	FICTION KNIGHT	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Main Library	Book	FICTION KNIGHT	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION KNIGHT	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION KNIGHT	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

One of Vanity Fair 's 21 Best Books of 2020 (So Far)

A Vulture , LitHub , and PureWow Most Anticipated Book of 2020

"As precise as any scientific observation and far more tantalizing." -- Vogue

"A sophisticated, surprising take on the campus novel (with a welcome dose of witchery). Knight's writing feels a little wild and charged, as if you're constantly on the edge of discovering something new with her."
-- Goop

" Hex is some dark and joyous witchery." --Lauren Groff, author of Florida

"A beautiful, spooky spell." --Jenny Slate, actress and author of Little Weirds

A breathtaking and hypnotic novel about poison, antidotes, and obsessive love

Nell Barber, an expelled PhD candidate in biological science, is exploring the fine line between poison and antidote, working alone to set a speed record for the detoxification of poisonous plants. Her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas, is the hero of Nell's heart. Nell frequently finds herself standing in the doorway to Joan's office despite herself, mesmerized by Joan's elegance, success, and spiritual force.

Surrounded by Nell's ex, her best friend, her best friend's boyfriend, and Joan's buffoonish husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. All six are burdened by desire and ambition, and as they collide on the university campus, their attractions set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak.

Meanwhile, Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study, and she begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love. In a dazzling and unforgettable voice, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight has written a spellbinding novel of emotional and intellectual intensity.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A tale of poison and obsession set amid the toxic halls of academe.Expelled from her graduate program in biological science after a lab-mate dies, a victim of the group's toxicological experiments, Nell Barber is left obsessed and unmoored. Though once she'd been focused on oak trees, she is now consumed by the need to finish the dead girl's project to "neutralize botanical toxins," to combine the poison and its antidote. Now it is Nell's mission, working alone in the exile of her Brooklyn apartment, to build "a poison that undoes itself." Yet it is not the work that is at the heart of her obsession but her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas. The novel itself is a series of journal entries, all addressed to her absent beloved. "As with the old work, the new work is for you, Joan," Nell writes. "What isn't for you?" The rest of Nell's world is populated with Joan-adjacent players. There is Joan's husband, Barry, the self-important and useless Associate Director of Columbia Undergraduate Residence Hallsless a threat to Nell than a man-shaped afterthoughtand Nell's two best friends, Tom and Mishti, who, as students in good standing, still have access to the privilege of Joan's presence, both enrolled as nondepartmental students in her class. Mishti is a beautiful chemist; Tom is a beautiful medieval and Renaissance historian and also Nell's ex-boyfriend. Soon, all six of them are intertwined, a web of sex and betrayal, with Joan (always) at the center. It is a lush and brooding novel, over-the-top in its foreboding, with Dinerstein Knight (The Sunlit Night, 2015) walking the delicate linemostly successfullybetween the Grecian and the absurd. As a string of weirdly mannered sentences, it is a joyfully deranged pleasure; as a novel, though, the experience is frustratingly hollow, populated by characters who only come to life in the book's final third.Admirably bold if sometimes hard to care about. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.