12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Michelle Huneven's ‘Bug Hollow' is an accidental novel, and an ode to ‘unchosen family'
At the urging of her friend
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The novel is an expansive family saga that unspools over decades and generations of the messy, loving, sometimes battling Samuelsons. Sibyl, the clan's complicated, critical mother, is based on the author's own mother, a dedicated teacher who 'lost interest in my sister and me,' says Huneven, while father, Phil, is soft-spoken and quietly loving. Above all, the novel is about making peace with 'the unchosen family that you're stuck with,' Huneven says.
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Architecture plays a big role in the book as well, especially the California modernism of Gregory Ain. Huneven's parents met in an Ain-designed house, and that's where Phil and Sybil first encounter each other in the novel. At a recent reading, Huneven says, 'I got to the point where I talked about the Ain planned home development … and I burst into tears, because they all burned down.'
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Huneven wrote the book before the massive wildfires that
'It's so amorphous at the beginning — you just kind of just throw out these ideas, and you remember what you like about your old house and you want it to be a little bit different. It's similar to a novel because it's so big, and like a novel it has so many rooms.'
Michelle Huneven will read at 7 p.m. Friday, June 27, at
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Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section.
Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at
