Blog Tour: Review of Sudden Traveler by Sarah Hall

Author: Sarah Hall

Publisher: Custom House

Publication Date: October 2019

Featuring her signature themes of identity, eroticism, and existential quest, the stories in Sarah Hall’s third collection travel far afield in location and ambition—from Turkish forest and coastline to the rain-drenched villages of Cumbria.

The characters in Sudden Traveler walk, drive, dream, and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journeys through life, death, and love. Science fiction meets folktale and philosophy meets mortality.

A woman with a new generation of pacemaker chooses to shut it down in the Lakeland, the site of her strongest memories. A man repatriated in the near east hears the name of an old love called and must unpack history’s dark suitcase. From the new world-waves of female anger and resistance, a mythical creature evolves. And in the woods on the border between warring countries, an old well facilitates a dictator’s downfall, before he gains power.

A master of short fiction, Sarah Hall opens channels in the human mind and spirit and takes us to the very edge of our possible selves.

Sudden Traveler is a short story compilation that has a little something for everyone in it.  For the most part, I enjoyed the book. As with any short story collection, I usually find that some of them work and some of them don't..at least for me.   There were two stories that really resonated with me, "Orton" and "Sudden Traveler".  They were beautifully written and are my two favorites out of the collection.  "The Woman the Book Read" was pretty good as well.  As for the other four, I found that they were a bit out there and honestly, I'm not sure I understood them.   Despite that, I do recommend picking this one up.  It's a quick read and I think everyone will be able to find a favorite among the pages.

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Sarah Hall

Photo by Richard Thwaites

Sarah Hall was born in 1974 in Cumbria, England. She received a master of letters in creative writing from Scotland’s St. Andrews University and has published four novels. Haweswater won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (overall winner, Best First Novel) and a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award. The Electric Michelangelo was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Eurasia Region), and the Prix Femina Étranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Daughters of the North won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. How to Paint a Dead Man was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Portico Prize for Fiction. In 2013 Hall was named one of Granta‘s Best Young British Novelists, a prize awarded every ten years, and she won the BBC National Short Story Award and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Find out more about Sarah at her website, and connect with her on Facebook.

Instagram Features

Tuesday, October 8th: Instagram: @book.hang.o.ver
Wednesday, October 9th: Instagram: @girlwithnoselfie
Thursday, October 10th: Instagram: @readvoraciously
Friday, October 11th: Instagram: @dropandgivemenerdy
Saturday, October 12th: Instagram: @sarahandherbookshelves
Sunday, October 13th: Instagram: @megsbookclub
Monday, October 14th: Instagram: @amberafterglowreads

Review Stops

Tuesday, October 8th: A Dream Within a Dream

Wednesday, October 9th: Iwriteinbooks’s blog
Thursday, October 10th: The Desert Bibliophile
Friday, October 11th: Instagram: @giuliland
Monday, October 14th: Instagram: @sixminutesforme
Tuesday, October 15th: Booked J
Thursday, October 17th: Real Life Reading

Monday, October 21st: she treads softly
Wednesday, October 23rd: From the TBR Pile

Thursday, October 24th: Instagram: @shereadswithcats
TBD: Thursday, October 17th: Have Coffee Need Books