Hieroglyphics

Written by Jill McCorkle

Narrated by Xe Sands

A mesmerizing novel about the burden of secrets carried across generations

Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically—lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.

Now, after many years in Boston, they have retired in North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d rather forget. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.

Hieroglyphics reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you. In her deeply layered and masterful novel, Jill McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and what it means to be a child piecing together the world all around us, a child learning to make sense of the hieroglyphics of history and memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781980088868

Reviews for Hieroglyphics

[bookanonjeff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jumbled And Disjointed, Yet Somehow Works. This is one of those books that arguably *shouldn't* work, given how truly disjointed it is with its time period and character jumps, and yet as more of a meditation/ reflective work on life and death, it really does actually work. As we work through the various streams of consciousness of Fred, Lil, Shelley, and Harvey, we see each of their lives through their own eyes as they struggle with past, present, life, and death. We see the traumas large and small, the regrets and the victories, the confusions and the joys. Admittedly, the particular writing style will be hard to follow for some, and even I found it quite jarring despite my own abilities to largely go with any flow of a book. But in the end it really does work to tell a cohesive yet complex story, and really that is all anyone can ultimately ask of a fiction tale. Thus, there is nothing of the quasi-objective nature that I try to maintain to hang any star reduction on, even as many readers may struggle with this tale. And thus, it is very much recommended.

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a slow moving book that requires a deliberate approach. The story uses the voices of 4 characters to tell the story. Frank and Lil are in their mid-80's. They have moved to North Carolina from outside Boston to be near their daughter. It is also near Frank's boyhood home. Both Lil and Frank experienced major tragedies when they were 10. Frank lost his father in a train derailment(true event) and Lil lost her mother in the Boston Coconut Nightclub fire(also a true event). Shelly is a young single mom(a court reporter) who lives in Frank's boyhood house with her young son Harvey(also one of the voices of the book). With this background we see the place that memory and events has in our lives. The book does a good job of moving between the characters and the picture of both families begins to emerge. It was not a happy book but the value of novels is that it allows us to look at lives that are different from ours. This book gave me the opportunity to see how much childhood upbringings are carried with us throughout our lives. For some, letting go of the past can be difficult. McCorkle is an excellent writer and this is a worthwhile book once you are clear about the subject matter.

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Big disappointment from one of my (formerly) favorite writers. I LOVED her early novels, especially Ferris Beach. This novel's main characters are a couple whose relationship is based upon their childhood tragedies: Lil's, the loss of her mother in the Cocoanut Grove fire; Frank's, the loss of his father in a railroad accident in N. Carolina. The third character is Shelley. a young mother of two, a court stenographer, who has been abandoned by her boyfriend. She lives in the same house in N. Carolina where Frank grew up with his mother, who survived the accident, and his stepfather. There's also the disturbing voice of Shelley's son Harvey, who seems to be haunted by Frank's childhood nightmares. I almost gave up halfway through and am not sure I made the right decision to continue. Even the reveals just left me somewhat indifferent.

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An elderly couple, Lil and Frank, move to North Carolina to be near their adult daughter. Shelley is a single mom of two boys, one in college and the other, Harvey, aged 6, living with her. is living in the house where Frank grew up, and Frank is haunted by the memories of his childhood in that house. Lil and Frank relive their pasts in detail, while trying to find purchase in their new environment. Shelley's memories of the past are painful as she struggles to raise Harvey. It is sometimes difficult to keep track of the characters as their timelines shift with their recollections of their pasts and their presents; however, these are all engaging people with challenges from the past that connect them to their lives in the present. Hieroglyphics is a compelling title for this novel.

[jim53_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

McCorkle's story begins with a man dropping by a home, telling the woman of the house that he used to live there, and asking to come in and look around. She puts him off, and we start learning about her life, plus his and his wife's. I found the jumping around in time a bit confusing till I had a better idea of the sequence of events. Nicely written, but I was never rushing to get back to it.

[katiekrug · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel is a mosaic of three lives, with ill-fitting and jagged pieces coming together to make a whole. I liked it but did not love it. I think the shifts in time and randomness of starting points, especially with Lil's narrative, were too jarring. It also didn't help that I was distracted by political events while trying to read this, so much of the fault is mine, not the author's. I did appreciate McCorkle's focus on grief and experience and the price and burden of holding onto things and memories. Her writing is very good, smooth and clear and sometimes stunning. I've read one other work of hers - Life After Life - which I remember loving. I will continue to seek out her work.3.5 stars(I received this book through LT's Early Reviewers program.)

[blbera · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hieroglyphics is a lovely novel that quietly adds layers to the characters until the end, when we are sorry to leave them behind.The novel tells the story of Lil, Frank, and Shelley, all of whom end up in the same North Carolina town. In alternate chapters, we learn their stories. At first, I wasn't sure I liked this approach because I found some people's stories so much more compelling than others', but in the end, McCorkle makes it work. Slowly, we get to know Shelley, a single mom with two boys. She tries to escape a painful past. Frank and Lil, a couple in their eighties, have moved to North Carolina to be close to their daughter.All the characters have survived painful pasts -- Frank and Lil try to hang on to the memories of Frank's dad and Lil's mom, while Shelley only wants to forget. In the process of learning about their pasts, McCorkle asks us to consider the importance of memory and the extent to which we should hang on to the past.

[nyiper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Maybe it's my own age which made so thoroughly enjoy Lil's writings about what she remembered because, I, too, remembered so many of the things she described, but in my own circumstances. There are at least three overlapping stories of families here...Frank's, Lil's, Shelley's, but also their interconnectedness through Shelley's house but also we see Frank's parents, and Lil's parents and then their relationships to their children. Shelley has her own story but her sons are so pulled into the distortions she finds herself providing to try and give them a childhood so different from her own. Not really a page-turning type of book....I was more afraid of missing details by reading too quickly.

[scenik1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I came to really love this book. The description on the book jacket describes a dear story, chronologically told. A young man and woman find each other and connect over their common experience of having lost a parent at a young age. Their marriage grows through the usual challenges of life; then, they retire and move to warmer climes where the wife starts to organize notes and letters and diary entries in order to leave their grown children some kind of personal history of their lives. Meanwhile , the husband explores the area where he grew up and experienced so much loss and adolescent confusion, locating the house he lived in and becoming fixated on gaining entry to it to try to find something he’d left behind. Now the house is inhabited by a young single mother, trying to raise her son, who understandably resists the requests of the strange old man who shows up at her door. At first, I didn’t understand the structure of the book and thought it was a sort of stream-of-consciousness narrative that I don’t often respond well to. However, in time I became comfortable with the way the tale unfolds and grew to really appreciate and admire it. The author’s depth of empathy with the human condition resulted in passage after passage that I noted down. I felt as though McCorkle had seen right into my own life, both moments in the past and also current states of mind. Example: “In short, I am homesick and I am timesick. I would be lying not to say that. It is possible to feel content and resolved and still be homesick. I miss all that no longer is,....”. Or how about in the letter to an adult son, when Lil reminds him of how he always used to hide a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that the family was putting together so that he could whip it out at the end and so be the one to finish the puzzle. My son did that too! And the era is about right. I haven’t come across any other author who could work an enthusiasm for the old “Dark Shadows” tv series into a story. That struck a chord with me. As did many other moments. With great tenderness and skill, Jill McCorkle weaves the story and brings the reader into the hearts and lives of the characters. I sank into it as though I had come upon a drawer of letters and journals that had been spilled on the floor and that I was picking up and reading, seemingly all out of order and yet coming together to create a beautiful picture of this handful of characters who crossed paths and shared a human moment

[rosecityreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jill McCorkle's new novel Hieroglyphics takes some time to get into because it is told from multiple points of view and goes back and forth in time from the present to earlier years in the characters' lives. But as the pieces come together, the intensity of the story grows. It is a story about parents and children, the memories they make and keep, and how they read the hieroglyphics of their family histories. The ends don't get tied up nicely, but the story will linger.

[lizzied_11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I know Jill McCorkle slightly, as I am a life-long resident of her hometown. Hieroglyphics let me indulge in the pleasure of recognition of local history, landmarks, and names. On the other hand, I am in my mid-70s, and found her story about the effects of childhood memories too close for comfort.Lil and Frank, the couple in their 80s and two of the four narrative voices in the book, came together because they had both lost a parent in two tragic accidents that claimed many other lives. In fact, their reliving their loss and how the loss affected their lives claims the majority of the book. They have made a good life for themselves, but their sense of loss is intense and sad for the reader.Shelly, a single mother who lives with her child Harvey in the house where Frank grew up with his mother and step-father, are the other two narrators. Shelly has her own family tragedy to deal with, and Harvey is desperately trying to deal with his mother's insecurities, his imperfectly repaired cleft lip, and the absence of his older brother, who is a freshman in college. Again, McCorkle draws the reader into their stories, and this reader was sad.The ending brings some resolution to all four. I am left wondering what of my own sunny childhood will haunt me in another ten years, assuming I'm given them.

[bookczuk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I struggled more than I anticipated with this book. Four points of view, and I was unable to engage with any of them. Yet McCorkle remains an author who can write in such a way that details become clear, vivid, and in this case, for an aging adult, all too familiar and disturbing. Thank you to Librarything and Algonquin Press for sending me my copy.

[kayanelson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked the premise of this book--a married couple who each experienced the loss of a parent when they were children and how it impacted their life. The married couple were Frank & Lil and then another character was Shelley and her "odd" son Harvey. But what was really the plot of the book? Each chapter was the thoughts of one of these people. There was no dialogue or intereaction between these people until the end of the book. For me there was nothing to care about in this book. The tie between Frank & Lil and Shelley & Harvey could have been much more interesting than it was. It almost didn't matter.

[2lz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Many thanks to librarything.com for the advanced copy of Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle in return for my honest review.I am not sure if it is the time that we all are living through, COVID-19, or if it is the joyless story itself that influenced my rating and review, but this wasn’t my favorite read. It is well-written with multiple points of view, but it is also a very sad story. There are so many unhappy characters, and their search for answers leads to even more heartache.

[samsattler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“I think that those who forget being children have likely lost their souls; it’s just that simple.” If this quote from page 261 of Jill McCorkle’s Hieroglyphics is true, the four main characters of her new novel remain firmly attached to their souls. One of the four, Harvey, actually still is a child, and Shelley, Frank, and Lil seem to live almost as much in the past as they do in the present. Frank and Lil, after spending most of their adult lives in Boston, have retired to North Carolina where Frank has become preoccupied with getting inside his boyhood home for one final look at the place he so vividly remembers. He particularly wonders whether the old Mason jar full of boyhood trinkets he left behind all those years ago might still be hidden away where he saw it last. Lil, his wife, has equally vivid childhood memories of her own, especially the ones so eerily similar to her husband’s. Shelley, whose own childhood was more troubled than she wants to admit even to herself, and her son Harvey are renting Frank’s old family home – and Shelley has no intention of letting Frank inside the rundown old place for a last look. Hieroglyphics is not the kind of book that hits the ground running and maintains a quick pace for the next 300 pages. That kind of book is easy for the reader to get into. Instead, McCorkle sets her hook here in a very gradual manner by building the depth of her main characters layer by layer until the reader learns to see them as the real flesh and bone people they are. By the end of Hieroglyphics, it is obvious that all four have something in common. Each, even six-year-old Harvey, is emotionally scarred by something that happened to one, or both, of their parents. Memories, though, are funny things, especially those held by older people involving their childhood experiences. Frank and Lil have vivid memories of those days, but they do not stop to think that the memories, even hazy as they are becoming, were originally filtered through the eyes of a child. Shelley has a past she so badly wants to keep hidden that she creates an alternate family history for her two sons. And little Harvey becomes the near-perfect reflection of all of his mother’s insecurities and fears.Bottom Line: Hieroglyphics is a literary novel for readers who enjoy memorably complex characters who are doing the best they can simply to get from one day to the next. Bit-by-bit, as their inner lives are revealed, it all starts to make sense – and it becomes impossible not to root for each of them to get past what has so emotionally scarred them. This one demands a little patience, but that patience is well-rewarded in the end.(Review Copy provided by Publisher, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

[librarian1204 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

No argument this is a very well written , thought provoking book about the lives of the three main characters; an elderly married couple , Frank and Lil and Shelley , a young mother . However, I could not stay with it for long periods of reading time. I even put off, at times, picking the book up to continue reading.It is a slow process as each of the MC think about and remember events from their past. Events that in Frank and Lil’s case shaped their futures. Since we all, as we age, spend time in the past it was easy to be at home with those sections. In the case of Shelley, her story past and present was disjointed and not as easily assimilated. The unifying object in the story is the house Shelley rents, the house Frank lived in for 10 years of his life.A book to be enjoyed by a reader who wants to spend time in the lives of others.Read as an ARC from LibraryThing.

[sunqueen_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The author has talent which comes across in turns of phrase, but where is the story? Death permeates this novel, the characters ramble about in confusing jumps back and forth in time, and leaves the reader feeling cheated.

[kimaoverstreet · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am a big fan of Jill McCorkle and once again she has produced some beautiful and profound turns of phrase in her new novel Hieroglyphics. I wasn’t a fan, though - I found it hard to identify with or even care what happened to all four of the main characters. It was just too rambling (particularly in Lil’s chapters) and character driven to suit me at this particular place and time.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

And I guess that's why we hold on to our bits and pieces in the first place, because we aren't' immortal, and though denial fills our days and years, especially those that have slipped away, that kernel of truth is always lodged within. We are all haunted by something-- ~from Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkleThrough a dozen moves and the purges each involved, there were boxes that followed me. They remained sealed and taped in each successive basement, but I knew they were there for when I would need them.The boxes held my diaries dating back to 1963 when I was ten, poems and unfinished novels I had written, scrapbooks and mementos.There were other boxes, too. Boxes of photographs and slides, books owned by my grandfather or mother or father, my grandfather's papers and newspaper articles, directories and yearbooks, dad's memoirs, mom's medical history.They were the 'bits and pieces' of my life and my parent's life and my grandfather's life.I have always been a keeper of things. I see the trait in my family, especially keeping memories and telling stories of long ago.In Jill McCorkle's new novel Hieroglyphics, Lil is eighty-five and worried about forgetting, but her childhood memories remain vivid and clear. "I can close my eyes and know every square inch," she says of her childhood home.Oh, me, too! I dream of the 19th c farmhouse I grew up in. I know the view from every window by heart, the turning of the stairs, the weight of layers of blankets in the unheated bedroom."I am homesick and I am timesick...I miss all that no longer is," Lil says.Lil is married to Frank, who is also haunted by the past, filled with "sadness and an awareness of the shadows." When he was ten years old his father died in a train wreck, extinguishing his mother's happiness. Frank is fixated on returning to his childhood home, hoping to find what he left behind.Frank's childhood home is now occupied by single mom Shelley and her child Harvey. Harvey is fearful, misses his father, sees ghosts, and losses himself in an alter-ego superhero with a mustache that covers the scar from his cleft palate surgery. Shelley is a court reporter who is overinvolved with the trial, in trouble for writing her thoughts into the transcript.Each character is struggling with the scars of their past. They have kept things secret, and they seek to understand the mystery of their parents.This is a dense book, emotionally charged, with a story that opens like a night blooming flower. There is darkness, with some flashes of humor and light. It tugged at my heart. And it chilled me with recognition and the knowledge that in the blink of an eye I will be Lil, leaving behind those boxes of diaries.I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

[eachurch-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hieroglyphics is a multi-layered novel full of empathy and powered by a desire to understand what happens when parental ties are damaged prematurely. It is an exploration of how we make sense of our lives when there has been a major disruption in them and the role forgiveness plays in finding peace. Although it has an unusual structure—four characters take turn telling their own story in their own way—the strands come together in a satisfying way. It is a slow-moving book, but patience with it pays off.

[susan0316 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am very close in age to one of the main characters in this wonderful novel and I understand Lil's need to search her past and figure out how she ended up where she is now. Some of her quests for the truth in her past get a bit jumbled up but her intentions remain the same - Who am I and how did I get to this point in my life?Lil and Frank married young and after 50 years at their house in Boston, they re-locate to a home in North Carolina to be close to their daughter. Lil is determined to leave a history for her children and grandchildren so she starts going through her notes and letters and diary entries from her life. Frank is becoming obsessed with the home he grew up in and keeps visiting the house to try to get the current owner to let him go through the house. Shelly a single mom with one son, doesn't have good memories of her upbringing and doesn't allow Frank into the house or near her son. Both Frank and Lil are spending time looking at their pasts while Shelly is trying not to think about her past.After reading this book, I wonder if it's time to collect all of my notes and letters and try to make some sense of my life to share with my son and my grandson and help them learn more about my life but more importantly for me to figure out how I got to where I am now.This beautifully written book is a look at old age and memories of the past.Thanks to goodreads for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.