Advance Praise "A debut reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping ." --Jeffrey Eugenides " The Hill is tragic, comic, gorgeously written , and overflowing with life ; everything you hope a novel will be when you read its opening line . It's a rare experience when a novel not only fulfills those hopes, but transcends them. The fact that this is Harriet Clark's first novel is not only astonishing, it speaks to the greatest hope of all--that the future of American literature is in exceptional, inspired hands ." --Michael Cunningham, author of Day "A masterful meditation on discipline, mothering, revolutionary idealism, and forgiveness, The Hill is also a wry and intensely gripping story of a tender-souled girl making sense of the punishing world she's inherited . The writing is so clear, lovely, and lonely--so gently philosophical --that when I got to the final line, I went back and began again, just to stay inside." --Justin Torres, author of Blackouts "Harriet Clark's The Hill orbits the endurance that attends faith and the daily, hourly, micro resiliencies which compose and conduct grace. Suzanna's visionary constancy--despite a phalanx of actors, human and institutional, conspiring against it--felt to me as morally urgent as anything in Dostoevsky .

How is it possible for a book with such manifest stakes to also be this funny? This propulsive? I don't know how Clark wrote The Hill , but I'm glad she did. I'll be re-reading it for the rest of my life ." --Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! "The story of two extraordinary minds, growing up in prison together. The Hill took two decades to write, and I really did have the sense that the insights of each of those years had culminated in a vantage point that feels totally new. I can't stop thinking about it and demanding that everyone read it ." --Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves " The Hill is a tenderly Kafkaesque novel about the cruelties and absurdities of incarceration. A book of tremendous depth and feeling that manages to be equal parts comedy of coming of age and Sebaldian rumination . Lady Bird meets The Emigrants .

I loved it. " --Brandon Taylor, author of Minor Black Figures "One of the most beautiful books I have ever read." --Tara Westover, author of Educated "A profound, funny, and utterly original excavation of a young girl's consciousness." --Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show "This book is a joy to read: the writing itself is wonderful but the conception is magical." --Vivian Gornick.