Hagar’s Reviews

More rave reviews for Edward P. Jones’s new collection, All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Writing in the Boston Globe, John Freeman argues that

Like William Trevor and Alice Munro, Jones compresses whole novels into these stories. Each new paragraph requires a family tree. This almost biblical layering may slow momentum, but it is the real story here: how a generation passes its fears and wisdom and beliefs on to the next, how a chink in that transfer is likened to death.

Meanwhile, in a review for the San Francisco Chronicle David Hellman looks at faith in Jones’s work:

Throughout these stories it is hard not to notice Jones’ affinity for Catholicism, but it is an ordinary, almost secular type of belief where one finds in ritual a comfortable friend, as opposed to the damning guilt of a Flannery O’Connor or the equally damning lack of repentance of a Graham Greene. What he shares with these two great Catholic writers, apart from a confident technical literary prowess, is the ability to work wonders with human emotion through the lens of moral ambiguity.

The superlative comparisons are unlikely to stop there, and I hope you’ll consider reading the book.