This historical fiction release is not at all what I expected in the best way. Holloway is a story about mental health and it excels in the character work. I can’t stop thinking about it ever since finishing and how glad I am that I continued reading. Keep reading this book review of Holloway for my full thoughts.
Summary
It is the late summer of 2021, and a girl named Nora is on the Paris Metro.
Nora, whose mother loved her, even though Nora was broken.
Nora, who couldn’t help her mother when her mother needed her most.
Nora, from whom the pandemic has taken nearly everything, save the object she clings to: a cylinder containing her mother’s ashes.
With no family left, no friends to speak of, and no way to turn back time, Nora has come to France to keep a promise she never got to make: to spread the ashes in a place her mother never got to see. But instead, Nora finds herself on the run through a forest in the night, taking refuge in a dark holloway. And when she wakes, and tries to make her way back to something she recognizes, she realizes that is impossible.
Because it is no longer 2021.
Questioning everything—including her own sanity—Nora sets out on a journey through a time and place completely foreign to her, and yet one that, much like the time and place she came from, is defined by death, loss, fear, and uncertainty. A journey in which she must find a way to honor her mother—and heal herself—in a world that feels irrevocably broken.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
Holloway begins as a story about accidental time travel and becomes a story about neurodiversity. This historical fiction is multi-faceted. Nora is grieving her mother and as a send off decides to sprinkle her ashes in France. But there she begins to un-pack her relationship with her mother. The good, the bad, and the emotional. All the ways her thoughts on vaccines during the pandemic, about her beliefs about Nora’s vaccinations and her autism, and unpacks her mother’s impact on her own life. How there was love, but there was also a deep misunderstanding, a loss of a relationship they could have had. In Holloway Nora embarks on this journey to say goodbye and instead ends up being about discovery.
Holloway looks at the ways the world ends in small and big ways. In pandemics and loss. And it very much is centered around a story about belief. Those moments when we start to realize the world is different than we thought. It’s also a book that I thought was going to be high action and instead is a character driven story. Holloway morphs into a story about how Nora sees herself, the ways she can find love and community, and to reconsider the comments she has heard. I am so glad I kept reading because Holloway becomes this tender story in front of your very eyes.
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Find Holloway on Goodreads, Storygraph, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.