Hieroglyphics
Jill McCorkle, 2020
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781643750538
Summary
A mesmerizing novel about the burden of secrets carried across generations.
Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically— lost a parent when they were children.
Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.
Now, after many years in Boston, they’ve retired to North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know.
Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy.
Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d hoped to keep buried. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.
Hieroglyphics reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you.
In her deeply layered and masterful novel, Jill McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and what it means to be a child piecing together the world around us, a child learning to make sense of the hieroglyphics of history and memory. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 7, 1958
• Where—Lumberton, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A., Hollins College.
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Hillsborourgh, North Carolina
Jill Collins McCorkle is an American short story writer and novelist. She graduated from University of North Carolina, in 1980, where she studied with Max Steele, Lee Smith, and Louis D. Rubin. She obtained her M.A. from Hollins College.
Novels
McCorkle has the distinction of having her first two novels published on the same day in 1984. Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said, “One suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist, with July 7th, she is also a full grown one.”
Since then she has published several other novels—including Life After Life (2013) and Hieroglyphics (2020). Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books
Stories
McCorkle has also published four collections of short stories, out of which four stories have been tapped for Best American Short Stories and several collected in New Stories from the South. Her short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Southern Review, Narrative Magazine and American Scholar among others.
Her story “Intervention” is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. An essay, “Cuss Time,” originally published in American Scholar was selected for Best American Essays. Other essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, Southern Living, Our State, Allure and Real Simple.
Teaching
McCorkle has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts, and Brandeis where she was the Fannie Hurst Visiting Writer. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard for five years where she also chaired Creative Writing.
Currently, McCorkle teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at NC State University and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a frequent instructor in the Sewanee Summer Writers Program and a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Awards
New England Booksellers Award
John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature
North Carolina Award for Literature
McCorckle lives with her husband, photographer Tom Rankin, in Hillsborough, NC. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[V]ibrant, engaging…. McCorkle’s art lies in chronicling the many minor episodes that build one person’s unique life…. The tone of Hieroglyphics is dreamier and more interior than that of McCorkle’s previous novel [Life After Life].… [A] generous, humane writer.
Sylvia Brownrigg - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review) [E]ngrossing…. McCorkle finds an elegant mix of wistfulness and appreciation for life…. Throughout, McCorkle weaves a powerful narrative web, with empathy for her characters and keen insight on their motivations. This is a gem.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) It isn’t a mystery, yet… Hieroglyphics builds like one as characters appear, slowly reveal more of their pasts and secrets…. The prose is magnetic, drawing you in and holding your attention as questions slowly turn into answers
BookPage
(Starred review) [P]owerful… masterful…. McCorkle offers a poignant meditation on the timeless question: is there existence beyond the grave?… A deeply moving and insightful triumph.
Booklist
(Starred review) Four characters take turns narrating [until on] closer reading… the ingenious structure of this novel reveals itself.… [Hierglypics] gathers layers like a snowball racing downhill before striking us in the heart.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for HIEROGLYPHICS … then take off on your own:
1. How have the tragedies in both Lil's and Frank's childhoods shaped their lives and their ideas about both life and death? How have their separate histories informed the adults they have become—Lil, for instance, wanting to be the mother for her children she never had?
2. How do Frank and Lil each face the prospect of death, which in their advanced ages, is not far off?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) What role have Frank's academic pursuits had on his beliefs about death—how does he view death? How do you view death? Lil writes to her children: "Your father has lately pitched death like one of his adventurous trips or a romantic rendezvous." What does she mean?
4. What is Lil's purpose, or her desire, in writing down her reminiscences—what does she hope to accomplish? What do her journal entries reveal about her and her state of mind? Do you keep a journal? If so, why? Is it for you? Is it for posterity?
5. What do you make of Shelley? Why is she so wary of Frank and his desire to visit his old home?
m. Shelley "learned early that she was treated best when not noticed … no one wants what the average or below-average person has, and so they leave you alone, and sometimes being left alone seems the best choice." What does this passage actually mean, and what does it reveal about Shelley. Do you agree with her: being "left alone seems the best choice"?
6. Discuss how the murder trial is woven into this story.
7. Do you find the ending of the novel uplifting or depressing? Ultimately, how would you define the novel's conclusion about what is essential when it comes to living life … and facing death?
8. What are hieroglyphics, and why might Jill McCorkle have chosen the term as the title of her novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)