Books
The Snow Collectors - now available!
The Physics of Imaginary Objects - Winner of the 2010 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
All the Day's Sad Stories - Winner of the 2008 Caketrain Chapbook Competition
Reviews
The Snow Collectors:
Publishers Weekly: “Hall seamlessly weaves dreamlike imagery with descriptions of police procedure and scientific inquiry as Henna works to confirm her intuition that the murder’s connection to the past is real and not imagined. This elegant account of a woman’s confrontation with a cover-up delivers historical intrigue and emotional depth.”
Starred Foreword review: “Its brutality tempered by its lovely phraseology, The Snow Collectors is an unusual mystery whose quirks are worth giving in to.”
Kirkus Review: “Birds, blood, the town library's tower room, and Fletcher's strange house combine with other elements to create a deliciously creepy atmosphere.”
Fangoria: “Hall is nothing short of a conjurer and this story of intrigue is her spell.”
Heavy Feather Review: “Tina May Hall has created a work of storytelling art in The Snow Collectors by weaving the genres of gothic mystery/romance, the atmosphere of a lyrical poem, and a warning of apocalyptic environmental collapse.”
The Masters Review: “The prose is lyrical but measured, evocative but never florid. Hall wields a frank briskness in her words, but not an impatience. Readers see clearly what they need to see, and by that token, they do not see what they do not need to see.”
“If Joan Aiken had set out to write Rebecca, The Snow Collectors might have been the result. An orphaned woman discovers a body and pushes her way into a concatenation of events that at first seems to offer her love but soon curves toward her own destruction. Dark and eccentric, quirky in all the right ways, and beautifully written, this is the story of someone who, like so many of us, keeps trying to unravel a mystery well past the moment when she knows she should stop.” Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World
“Eerie, atmospheric, and unexpected - this gorgeously written book grips hold of you from the first page and doesn’t let go.” Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
“Tina May Hall’s magnificent heroine Henna—an ingenious cross between Nancy Drew, a Charlotte Bronte character, and a cynical Gen-Xer—is the best thing that’s going to happen to you this year. This novel, which is a tale of love and longing, fear and grief, is also a deep meditation on snow and the power of water to both ravage and save us.” Sherrie Flick, author of Thank Your Lucky Stars
“At first, Tina May Hall’s The Snow Collectors seems all subtle piecework, every sentence exquisite, combining icy clarity with sensual surprise. Yet in no time the novel reveals more, the stains and strains of our human messes. Altogether, it proves a miraculous amalgam: a grief narrative, a Gothic romance, a cold-case mystery, and a tale of climate catastrophe. I came away ravished.” John Domini, author of MOVIEOLA! and The Color Inside a Melon
“The Snow Collectors is a wonder of a book, and Tina May Hall is a wonder of a writer. In lyrical, precise prose, Hall draws us into the snow-globed labyrinth of a murdered woman and the ghosts of a nineteenth-century expedition within a novel that is equal parts mystery, gothic fiction, and experimental innovation. Hall’s work occupies the liminal space between poetry and prose, and this novel is an atmospheric marvel that is both ethereal and impossible to put down.” Anne Valente, author of The Desert Sky Before Us
The Physics of Imaginary Objects:
LA Times: “Tina May Hall’s pungent writing breaks down walls between poetry and prose, narrator and reader, humor and horror. These stories, a daunting cross between Rikki Ducornet and early Jayne Anne Phillips, reveal the author’s fascination with life and death, the confusion of hunger with other needs, and the bureaucratic tyranny of forms: sonnets and novellas, chapters and verses.”
Wall Street Journal: “It looks like prose to the eye, but it’s memorable for the beauty and rhythm of the language, and it longs to be read aloud.”
Publishers Weekly: “Atmospheric and dreamlike stories sure to fascinate.”
New Pages: “If you’re looking for moments that resonate with palpable vibrancy, a meeting of the minds over the space of a page, and breath-stopping eloquence that delivers all the best features of poetry and prose, Hall’s The Physics of Imaginary Objects will not disappoint for a single moment.”
HTMLGiant Roxane Gay: “One of the most breathtaking books you will read this year. The stories are dense and elegant and oftentimes strange but always engaging. Hall is a master sentence crafter.”
Rain Taxi: “Hall has birthed her tiny perfect things over and over by magically reconfiguring the simplest words.”