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Duncan Newberry

A beautifully written book with a unique sense of place.

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2016

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What makes a good novel? The answer varies between readers, and even in the same reader at different times of their life. For me, now, what I look for is empathy. I want to feel a connection with the inhabitants of a written world, feel invested in the story and the outcome. Nothing makes me love a book more than looking up after hours engaged and having to separate myself from this world another has created.

This novel did exactly that; it took me to a place far from home and engaged me in the hopes and lives of people who don't exist. The realism of the story brings you in bit by bit until you feel for the the inhabitants of this world, you understand their motives and aspirations, root for and pity them in turn. Each charecter is fully realized; there are no angels or demons but flawed people all trying to do what they think is best. The writing style is poetic and often lyrical, always drawing the reader further in until the last sentence when you feel that momentary sadness as you look into the following pages and realize there is no more reading to be had. Summarily evicted you will look online for a sequel (spoiler: there is no sequel yet) and just have to live with that fact.

Beyond the plot big ideas in this story; ideas about love, commitent, family, parenting, poverty, class and work. These ideas though are placed in context of a realistic life and so rather than seeming preachy or overbearing the author creates a place where the reader can think about them freely. While I read the book breathlessly for the story it had given me a lot to think about afterwards.

Lisamm

The hidden lives of hardscrabble Vermont

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2015

The gritty side of Vermont is one of the characters in this book as well as the beauty of nature and the life of the hardscrabble farm. The novel is told in the first person by Fern who meets Hal while working in the summer on a vegetable farm. She longs to be living on a farm and has some romantic notions of what life on a farm would be. She quits college to marry Hal who was the crew leader at the farm where she was interning. Hal's father dies and he takes possession of Hidden View farm. Soon Fern finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy. The daughter is born but Hal soon resents his child as Fern can't work as much with him. The life on this farm does not turn out to be the pastoral sweet life that Fern had imagined. Hidden from her initial view of Hal and the farm was the great debt that the farm was carrying, Hal's habit of drinking, and the fact that Hal has a brother who has rights to part of the farm. When this brother, Lucien returns, tension between the brothers is palpable. Lucien is nothing like his big, strong brother. He and Fern talk. Soon there is a sexual tension surrounding them.
The book is vivid and the writing is poetic and strong. The portrayal of a contemporary Vermont which is often hidden from view of the tourists, and even, in this book, the troubles of the characters is hidden from view. The farm and its inhabitants seem isolated from others as if they and their troubles are confined to a small world of their own.
The book lingered with me for days after reading it, thinking about the choices that Fern had made with her life, thinking about this place that Stanciu painted so deftly with words.

Leslie Rivver

Living True

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2015

Brett Ann Stanciu's Hidden View is fiction, but will resonate with true-to-life readers, as so many must find themselves in comparable life situations: we long to be committed to a person and a way of life but often find that our partner is unfulfilling because of lack of reciprocal commitment. This novel will have you sitting beneath centuries-old sugar maples, longing to bring land to life, and, mostly, wanting to connect, truly connect, with another human being. It is at once a story of despair, a story of determination, and a story of a life determined to be truly lived.

Barbara Bettisworth

A pure pleasure.

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2015

I loved this novel. It is a rare pleasure to find a writerly writer, whose elegant prose enhances so adeptly her story and characters. Stanciu has a unique ability to move from the mundane--baking bread, crusted oatmeal, and baby drool--to the sublime--Lady Moon, and her "ethereal rainshower of light-gems", as she illustrates her character's struggle to make sense of life on the planet, and on the farm.

As she is forced to acknowledge the crumbling dream of her idyllic farm life and marriage, Stanciu's Fern asks "Whatever was it I had wanted? To live, to live: I had thought it was that simple." Fern learns--as we all do--that life isn't simple, but the journey itself is littered with moments of transcendent joy and natural beauty and Stanciu captures them enthrallingly.

joyce mandeville

Beautifully written and paced to keep the reader fully engaged

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2016

A rich, complex, and utterly compelling debut novel. Beautifully written and paced to keep the reader fully engaged.

Heidi Dorr

This debut novel by Brett Stanciu is beautifully rendered and full of intricately woven descriptions of the ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2015

This debut novel by Brett Stanciu is beautifully rendered and full of intricately woven descriptions of the Vermont she clearly loves. Stanciu's writing is at once tough and fragile, and she walks that fine line of expressing love (for her children, the land, knitting) full-blown and yet one never feels the words are anything but new and authentic.