Hannah Holborn

All That Remains is the first book in the Missing & Exploited series featuring Detective Harvey Sam. When eight-year-old Gabriel Wheeler is abducted during his school's Christmas production, the case affects Harvey deeply. Not only did his non-biological daughter, Effie, attend the same school, but she was also taken away from him that night. Harvey's partner, the girl's mother, left him and moved to the other side of the country. On top of that, Harvey has to deal with Gabriel's mother, an addict and prostitute, who firstly failed to report her son missing and then publicly shames Harvey when the police fail to find any clue of Gabriel's whereabouts.
This isn't a whodunit mystery, as the abductor is introduced early on and the reader is aware of the motive through the kidnapper's perspective. It is very much a character-driven psychological suspense story, as the reader delves into the lives of all those linked to the disappearance of Gabriel. Although dark and heartbreaking in parts, it was also very moving and uplifting to see Gabriel portrayed as such an extremely resilient little boy. The other characters were also very interesting, flawed, but very believable.
When I read the previous edition of this book last year, I kept wondering why there was such a focus on certain characters. Having now read the second book, Strange Lineup, I appreciate this a lot more and have to say I'm really impressed with Hannah Holborn's clever plotting. This novel works a standalone, there are no cliffhangers, but several of the characters reappear in the sequel, which I would also highly recommend.
Very captivating and a bit different from the usual detective stories, I would recommend this to anybody who enjoys well-plotted psychological suspense with meticulously crafted characters.
Many thanks to Hannah Holborn for providing me with a free copy.… (més)

Strange Lineup is the second book in the delightfully different detective series featuring Harvey Sam.
Set five years after the bungled investigation into the abduction of Gabriel Wheeler, we catch up with Harvey as he is facing his weirdest case yet while simultaneously trying to sort out his thorny family and relationship situation.
This one really made me wonder how the author manages to come up with these imaginative stories. I'm always a bit wary when the controversial Dissociative Identity Disorder appears, but Hannah Holborn nailed it. Anybody who liked 'United States of Tara' as much as I did, will enjoy this fast-paced psychological suspense story.
It all starts off with a suicide by doctor, but not in the assisted suicide meaning. Gillian, mother to Anatole and wife to Frank, was looking for a way out, trying to get away from an abusive affair. She also wanted to provide financial stability for her family. Instead, Frank and Anatole end up being pursued by the police and by an arrogant psychopath while Detective Harvey Sam is trying desperately to put the pieces of this rather complex and strange case together.
It was great to catch up with Gabriel, Helena and Romy after the events of the first book and Harvey Sam continues to be a very intriguing character. The poor guy just can't seem to catch a break. I really enjoy how the author tells the story from multiple perspectives. She gets into the mind of some rather offbeat characters and has a real talent for providing the very believable perspectives of children/teenagers.
A really unusual story, well-plotted and with great, fleshed out characters. I can't wait to read the next installment.
I received a complimentary copy from the author. Thank you!… (més)

Fierce is a great collection of stories about people who stuggle through life. Some of the struggles are self-imposed, but most are not. Ms. Holborn has shown us people dealing with loss of family members, raising children who are ill, dealing with alcoholism. All of the characters are real and their stories are sometimes funny and always touching.

The stories are largely set in the Yukon town of Everlasting, where the challenges of the landscape and isoloation mirror those of the characters.

I am looking forward to Ms. Holborn's first novel, promised on the fly-leaf of my copy of her stories.… (més)

Let's begin with an understatement: Fierce is aptly titled. Though don't think for a second despite the innate intensity of said ferocious title and its oft-aggressive accompanying contents that you won't laugh hyenaishly (while you're cringing or crying or trying to compose yourself) as you read Hannah Holborn's dazzling debut of nine unforgettable stories and one brilliant novella.

Let's dispense with the mandatory, obligatory criticisms shall we, that this well meaning but objective reviewer, who understands he cannot possibly do justice toward all ten riveting revelations beheld in this vibrant volume, might be deemed unbiased and credible. This reviewers critiques are as follows:

There, whew, with that out of the way, the review proper (and the lauds) can officially begin.

Holborn’s prose is rife with poetic sensibilities. In the opening story, We Were Scenes of Grief, the hometown to grieving teenage orphan, Penny Dreadful, a dilapidated and claustrophobic community, Holborn describes as “a cornered wildcat,” an apropos phrase which serves also the added function of describing the desperate outcome of Penny Dreadful’s tragic circumstances – and her resulting personality’s fangs and claws -- to a tee. Penny’s grandmother, a character culled from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, lives in a “clinically depressed neighborhood”. And like that humongous Indian out of Ken Kesey’s classic, it's a mentally ill inmate, Penny’s debilitated grandmother, who pleasantly surprises the reader as being the key unlocking Penny (no-longer-Dreadful’s) poignant epiphany as she settles debts with her painful past and recognizes her potential (sans her tragicomic-goth-makeup'd-blue-dyed-hair-rebellion) and possible bright future ahead. This is inspirational, though unsentimental, storytelling.

Holborn’s style is crack-of-a-bat crisp. Like Annie Proulx or Flannery O' Connor before her, there’s economy and stinginess over wasted words – there simply aren’t any – each word's sardine’d in dense sentence tins, imbued more often than not with embedded symbols and metaphors that when happened upon, speaking for myself, evoke “whoa!” moments.

Take a good long gander at one such striking example in If The World Was Flat. Judith Fellman (one could comment forever on Holborn’s Pynchonesque name creations – Penny Dreadful? Merlyn Shipperbottom? Rosa Quarrell? Cricket? Jeffrey Wonder? -- at how these eccentric surname’s serve themselves as foreshadowing symbols, but time and space won’t allow), reminiscing about her deceased mother, depicts her as possessing “a doe-like grace”. Keep that doe in mind and return three pages earlier in the story when Judith, then thirteen, on a backpacking, father-mandated, coming-of-age ritual trip along the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington’s North Cascades, a trip she’d just as soon have opted out from, and her well meaning though subtly demeaning father spy “a doe peeking out from behind an alder”. Understand also that Judith’s mother, long before succumbing to "tan-induced melanoma" had abandoned by the time of this backpacking adventure, her idealistic, over-intellectualizing professor husband chronically disgusted by her lowbrow daily soap opera viewing habit, not for another man mind you (or woman) but for some simple peace of mind! Who wouldn’t want to leave a demanding, elitist academician like that? Anyway, Judith’s father -- guess what he does for the doe (this is some visually stunning symbolism): “Breaking his own rule about not feeding wild animals he gathered a handful of tender bitterbrush and held it out….She [the doe] tested the bitterbrush with her teeth and then, disappointed, backed away to hide herself….” A touching, melancholic metaphor that seamlessly shows without contrivance and without hammering you over the head with it why the “tender, but bitter” offerings of an unintentionally but nevertheless insensitive husband to his wife, helped fell the Fellman marriage.

There’s much more in Fierce to set beneath the microscope (and I heartily recommend the interested reader – and how could you not be interested? – do so asap, and patiently pan for gold among these compelling currents as hermaphroditic Dulcey did in The Fierce with the Fierce. But let’s step back briefly for the larger panoramic perspective, perhaps a vista as wide-ranging and sublime as the one Judith Fellman witnessed at an icy rest stop along Top of the World Highway in the remote Yukon interior, after she’s triumphantly conquered, staring out among the nameless snow ridden mountains, what had been until then, lifelong, incarcerating fears.

Fierce I think, when I consider the unfortunate lives depicted; or, might they just be fortunate lives that've yet ascertained how fortunate they truly are, like Andy and Alice's lives, lives finally permitting themselves as parents to "pull their own strings" through the difficult daily dramas of raising a child born with special needs (Angelman's syndrome) in We Danced Without Strings. Or, for that matter, what about the unfortunate-appearing lives, lives which when you glance at them look like sure shit, represented in this regard by the teenage girl, Gwen, afflicted with a cleft palate (albeit by now surgically repaired) who somehow sees herself so blessed she reaches out with a forgiving heart toward her childhood tormentor and nemesis who's about to do something suicidally stupid because her loser fiance dumped her for a stripper working at Dolls 'N More in Like Utah's Bingham Canyon Mine? And be sure to google Utah's Bingham Canyon Mine while you're at it, if, like me, you'd never heard of it before, for it's a magnificent, jaw-dropping image perfectly matching the emotional black hole created by the vast void of physical deformity.

So, Fierce, getting back to what I think, is ultimately about character, meaning both an artistic rendering of the traits of true character and also the imperfect, damaged and often mercilessly exploited lives which occasionally, inspirationally, after much heartache, bitterness, stubborn resistance, and graceful nudges from the voice of a spectacularly non-condemning God (read Seaweed), inevitably demonstrate the depths of suppressed character perhaps lying dormant all along.

Hannah Holborn knows a thing or two about true character, seems like to me, and how to effectively set characters down in impossible but eventually promising scenarios on the page, having (if I may paraphrase her publisher’s blurb) worked extensively teaching life skills to aboriginal women, inner-city youth, the mentally ill, and probably many other down-and-out outcasts and “freaks” -- and, I suspect, she's gleaned much character from a lot of her own unfortunate, similarly Fierce- types of personal experiences. Holborn, too, is downright earthy in her writing, did I mention that?, regaling the amused reader in the first paragraph of her novella, River Rising with unexpected, out-of-left-field riffs about, ahem, sex toys -- yes, oh yes!, yessss, sex toys! -- but always, yes always, overarching the occasional crass wisecracking musings of Holborn's earthiness, shines sheer elegance upon each page.

Here’s hoping that Fierce soon becomes a fearsome force the reading public-at-large beyond just Canada must wrestle and reckon with mightily.… (més)