Mr. Splitfoot
Samantha Hunt
Constable & Robinson
Samantha Hunt’s third novel, Mr. Splitfoot, is a modern day gothic, set in the wooded suburbs of New York. It is a book about hucksterish faith-peddlers, about haunted spaces, and about the fetishising of the freakish. The traffic here between the living and the dead is strange indeed. The novel shifts between two linked narratives, and the various ‘ghost stories’ that inform them. The first tells of Cora, a woman pregnant with the child of her twisted ex-lover, Lord; the second of her aunt Ruth, whose childhood is spent at the ‘Love of Christ! Foster Home, Farm and Mission’, run by the mysterious ‘Father’. The power of these stories’ cultish patriarchs is offset by the novel’s evocation of an alternate matriarchy of women and male allies. Mothers and sisters make journeys that blur the past, present and future.
There is much to enjoy here. Hunt is both observant and funny, and manages to reflect on well-trod topics – the spiritual poverty of internet culture, how cults are bad – in fresh, surprising ways. She has a fine ear for off-the-beat rhythm and phrasing, and in the best parts, stark staccato sentences keep the plot moving at a clip. In slower moments, the language sometimes lags and some symbolism can seem forced. Still, when the reader is allowed to get swept away in the glorious gothic kitsch, this book brings not only intrigue but real pleasure.
Words: Gillian Moore
