Story of Land and Sea (Smith) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Set in the years around the Revolutionary War in a North Carolina coastal town, Katy Simpson Smith’s first novel is steeped in grief.... [The family's] losses are unrelenting; the act of merely keeping going seems almost heroic. From the start, Ms. Smith’s spare, rhythmic prose captivates.... Her refusal to serve up false redemption is admirable.
Carmela Ciuraru - New York Times


Smith has a real gift for describing both hope and despair, which is one of the hardest things for an author to do well. She’s also gifted at drawing realistic, three-dimensional characters, particularly Tabitha and her grandfather…Smith is absolutely a writer to watch.
NPR


Hypnotic…Smith employs a style of impressively measured, atmospheric understatement in her unabashedly stark descriptions, and we thrill to watch her characters row stoically into a darkening future.
Elle


With her preternaturally mature debut, Smith makes a persuasive bid to join the ranks of Hilary Mantel and Marilynne Robinson-people who have informed visions of history and the writing gifts to make them sing… Spartan, lyrical prose chimes in tune with austere times, wringing beauty from hard-bitten straits.
Independent Weekly


A luminous debut...
Oprah Magazine


Smith lyrically but firmly draws us still back in time to reveal the lives that surround her character…Transporting, tragic, both tranquil and turbulent, Smith captures life in any time period-but especially this era of newfound freedoms-with grace and powerful prose.
Interview Magazine


A bereaved father and his son-in-law struggle to understand the tragedies that have befallen them in Smith’s debut novel, which is set among the marshes of coastal North Carolina during the uncertain time of the American Revolution.... Smith’s soulful language of loss is almost biblical, and the descriptions of her characters’ sorrows are poetic and moving.
Publishers Weekly


Smith's spare prose and storytelling style is resonant of oral history or folk tales, and the early chapters...call to mind Sena Jeter Naslund's Ahab's Wife. At first, this style creates something of a remove for the reader.... Despite the many sad events, the reader eventually engages, and the novel ends with a note of hope. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal


[A] striking debut novel that reads like poetry and will linger like mythology, as Simpson’s language and metaphors weave threads of magic through each sentence.
BookPage


In her debut novel, Smith takes liberties with linear narrative and employs ever shifting points of view but still doesn't quite manage to imbue her stoic characters with inner lives.... Though Smith's homespun prose conveys a sense of the period without undo artifice, this is more a diorama of archetypes than a fully-fleshed drama.
Kirkus Reviews