Mr. Splitfoot

By: Samantha Hunt

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Emily Woo Zeller

Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

A contemporary Gothic from an author in the company of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.

Ruth and Nat are orphans packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later Ruth's niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who - or what - has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?

In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, and the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural - and vice versa.

©2016 Samantha Hunt (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

wonderfully weird, dark, hopeful and beautiful

What did you like best about this story?

Entirely original take on a ghost story. I loved it, and am a big fan of Samantha Hunt's gorgeous language, punctuated with her very unique sharp, dark wit. This story had everything for me - plot, style, and characters I could hold hands with.

Killer Plot Twist!

Absolutely loved this story! The narrators were wonderful at weaving the stories of these two amazing women together.

A surprise after every chapter

This was a fantastic ghost story with an off-kilter sense of humor, and of itself.

Huffing Ectoplasm

Ms. Hunt...I'm not sure how to react to your book other than to say, hmmm, it was interesting...(like they say, "your mother's meatloaf is *interesting*"). Not sure what the hell was going on. It was like running in a dream where your feet don't touch the ground -- but then there is a passage in the book where the characters do just that. Or like being really stoned at the dentist and thinking you've solved world peace and then the gas wears off; or driving down the road when you notice you suddenly don't know how you got where you are; or listening to 11 hrs of an audio book and wondering if the LSD you took in your wild youth really is stored in your spinal column and just got knocked loose... Freaked me out, so I resorted to the experts.

"What keeps all this engaging — beyond the real charm of these two young people — is the way Hunt refuses to let any conclusions solidify in her wry prose." [Wash. Post] Read that last little portion of the quote again....Ehhh... I'm not convinced they know what the hell either. They wrote some very nice things about your book, loved the prose, which made me feel a little bit better about myself, a little less obtuse, because I too loved the prose. Which brings me to how the hell I came about picking your book. I saw the title somewhere in a S. King interview; again it was suggested to me by Audible; again a friend said I needed to read; and I enjoy me some supernatural Gothic occasionally, especially those that are "evil...fru-its of the devil" [Mike Meyers]. Splitfoot sounds like the reportedly cloven-hoofed Beelzebub, the cover looks like the wily garden serpent, voila. And here I am finished and I'm still not sure whether or not your Mardellion is supposed to be Mephistopheles.

A very encourage ing reviewer said..."the novel moves not just in two time frames, told through two voices, a first-­person narrator and a third, but also moves in the fourth dimension."[NYTimes] I suspect my own literary shortcomings, but have to tell you that I've transcended the temporal and spatial interpretations of the fourth dimension with Proust, H.G.Wells, Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford more soberly. And, I love a good mash-up: future past and present; fact and fiction; science and supernatural...throw in some religious dogma, and I'm in Mitchell heaven. Mix you did! From L. Ron, to Joseph Smith, to aliens, Carl, Sagan, to a comet that hit the US, to a Comet-cleanser snorting cult leader *deep breath* golden plates to the Voyager Golden Records.

I can't really write I review of a book that leaves me wondering, WTH? So, I'm taking some of your words as advice...“There isn’t any point to it,” complains Cora, mid-journey. “I’m not getting anywhere. No start, middle, or end.”
Call me Cora.

Not the gothic for me

On paper this should have been my new favorite book with the religious fundamentalism and cults and Kelly Link comparisons but I struggled to get through the book and spent most of the middle bored and looking for patterns.
I bumped it up to 3 stars because I enjoyed the ending despite seeing the plot twist miles from the end.
I also have given up on books narrated by Cassandra Campbell; her tone of voice hear made me think of a disgruntled librarian and I just can't anymore.

I love this book!

I heard an interview with the author on Studio 360 and tried to get the Audible version. Too soon. So I read it on Kindle. Hated to lose the characters so I ordered it on Audible. Even better the second time. Great writing, well performed. You will often have to stop because a sentence is so powerful or beautifully written.These characters and their story are still with me. Now, added to my favorite books list.

A Bohemian Brew

A bizarre story that defies simple description or explanation: parts journey, supernatural, grotesque, coming-of-age, cult, flim-flam, romance and surreal.

Maybe I could say the novel is a long and lively stew brewed up by a playful witch, after oversleeping her nap at the credibility gap.

A Decent Read

This was a decent read, I enjoyed listening to it. I’m giving it four stars because the author did a great job building up a good story but, it fell flat at the very end. It was almost as if she wrote herself into a corner and then couldn’t come up with an ending that matched the hype. Still, I recommend this book despite the lackluster finish. The writing style is interesting and I was kept in suspense which, to me, means the story is worth a listen.

enjoyable listen

unique story with interesting clues strewn along the way. will probably relisten more than once.

Magical, but overwritten and overlong

Framed as a journey from the present to the past in upstate New York, there is magic in this tale of good and evil. But the magic is impaired by gusts of overwriting and a tendency toward sentimental, even maudlin, rumination.

A long, overlapping, double narrative sags in the middle then, by the end, resolves into a too humdrum conclusion that finally gives way to the maudlin. There is real magic in some of the book's many characters and the moody presence of a landscape long past its gilded age glory days. But Twin Peaks seems close at hand as well.