Willa & Hesper

De: Amy Feltman

Narrado por: Dara Rosenberg, Christine Lakin

For fans of What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell and The Futures by Anna Pitoniak, a soul-piercing debut that explores the intertwining of past and present, queerness, and coming of age in uncertain times.

Willa's darkness enters Hesper's light late one night in Brooklyn. Theirs is a whirlwind romance until Willa starts to know Hesper too well, to crawl into her hidden spaces, and Hesper shuts her out. She runs, following her fractured family back to her grandfather's hometown of Tbilisi, Georgia, looking for the origin story that he is no longer able to tell. But once in Tbilisi, cracks appear in her grandfather's history-and a massive flood is heading toward Georgia, threatening any hope for repair.

Meanwhile, heartbroken Willa is so desperate to leave New York that she joins a group trip for Jewish twentysomethings to visit Holocaust sites in Germany and Poland, hoping to override her emotional state. When it proves to be more fraught than home, she must come to terms with her past-the ancestral past, her romantic past, and the past that can lead her forward.

Told from alternating perspectives, and ending in the shadow of Trump's presidency, WILLA & HESPER is a deeply moving, cerebral, and timely debut

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Willa & Hesper is a novel with a beating heart, a love story that is also an intricate love affair with time, history, religion and inheritance. In fresh and captivating prose, and spanning three vibrantly-rendered countries, Amy Feltman's debut enthralled me."
— Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

"A lyrical, timely story about love, heartbreak, and healing. Willa & Hesper explores religion, queerness, what it means to live in today's world in a female body, and the meaning of family in tight, absorbing prose. A beautiful debut by a striking new voice."—Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me

"A debut novel for those who loved Everything is Illuminated, but updated with a queer-young-romance- twist. The title characters in Amy Feltman's Willa & Hesper find solace from their breakup in the rabbit holes of their European Jewish background."—New York Times Book Review

"Amy Feltman's debut novel is a joy to read, thrumming with inventive, playful language and filled with characters so finely drawn that they'll feel all too familiar. Willa and Hesper struggle to make sense of the histories, cities, traumas, and families that have shaped them - they struggle, in other words, to grow up. But in Feltman's hands, that universal tale feels utterly fresh and absorbing. With a sharp eye for detail and a lush sense of place whether we're in New York or Tbilisi, she has written an unforgettable story about love, grief, identity, and belonging."—Angelica Baker, author of Our Little Racket

"Willa & Hesper crystallizes a truth that haunts any of us who yearn to fall in love--our ability to be close to another person is always shaped by our secrets, our memories, our familial past. This debut is tender and tough, startlingly intimate, yet attuned to the larger troubles of our current political moment. A moving portrait of two young women, reckoning with themselves and their world, in hopes of finding their way back to one another."—Naima Coster, author of Halsey Street

"This is the queer, coming of age, complicated love story I've been wanting to read for years. I wish I knew Willa and Hesper when I was in my twenties, though I still don't know whose side I'd take after their break-up -- both are strange and smart and compelling."— Katie Heaney, author of Never Have I Ever

Beautiful novel

I recently finished this book & it was so good in so many ways. It’s a f/f romance that focuses on the whole of a relationship that Willa & Hesper had - including the breakup and their individual choices & trips post breakup. It also features fantastic commentary on diaspora communities in general but especially the third generation in the US. One character is Jewish and lost family in the Shoah; the other is Eastern European (I’m having a brain fart on remembering the where) by way of her Grandfather who is dying & slowly losing his memories. Both go on trips to various countries in Europe & discover intimate things about themselves & their experiences & they both realize and appreciate finally the experience of being in a relationship together. It’s a beautiful book & I highly recommend it. I’d categorize this one as between YA & general fiction- Hester is 22 while Willa is 28. There isn’t much sex in it but there’s plenty of kissing and I will say a content warning for obviously Holocaust discussion but also sexual assault (the character comes to terms with it in the end & it’s beautifully handled). The narrators are perfect choices. I’m definitely buying a physical copy for my personal library because it is such a wonderful & important novel.