Hex
- Author Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
- Narrator Jenny Slate
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 14 May 2020
- Run Time 5 hours and 36 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Botany and plant sciences, Modern and contemporary fiction, Thriller / suspense fiction.
Get in the xigxag app
Already purchased
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order
Buy Now
£{{ price }}
Send as a gift
Click to open directly in the xigxag app.
Flexible Pricing & Rewards For Listening
At xigxag, the more you read, the less you pay* on select audiobook and x-book® titles, as in the table below. Pricing updates automatically in the app and resets one year after your first purchase. And you can always find a selection of brilliant titles available for only £3.99.
*Only the full price titles you buy count toward your personal pricing tier. Full price titles don’t include Listen for Less or other books bought with a voucher or discount code.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price per title
- £7.99
- £6.99
- £5.99
- £4.99
- £3.99
Listen to a sample
What to expect
Bloomsbury presents Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, read by Jenny Slate.
‘Wise, funny, suspenseful’ JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
'Sardonic and strange ... With its dark humour and loopy lyricism, it bewitches’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Narrated with badass gusto' DAILY MAIL
'Reads like a botanist’s cross-breeding of The Secret History and Department of Speculation' EMMA STRAUB
Nell Barber, an expelled PhD candidate in Biological Science, is exploring the fine line between poison and antidote, working alone to set a speed record for the detoxification of poisonous plants. Her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas, is the hero of Nell’s heart. Nell frequently finds herself standing in the doorway to Joan’s office despite herself, mesmerized by Joan’s elegance, success, and spiritual force.
Surrounded by Nell’s ex, her best friend, her best friend’s boyfriend, and Joan’s buffoonish husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. All six are burdened by desire and ambition, and as they collide on the university campus, their attractions set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak.
Meanwhile, Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study, and she begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love. In a dazzling and unforgettable voice, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight has written a spellbinding novel of emotional and intellectual intensity.
‘Wise, funny, suspenseful’ JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
'Sardonic and strange ... With its dark humour and loopy lyricism, it bewitches’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Narrated with badass gusto' DAILY MAIL
'Reads like a botanist’s cross-breeding of The Secret History and Department of Speculation' EMMA STRAUB
Nell Barber, an expelled PhD candidate in Biological Science, is exploring the fine line between poison and antidote, working alone to set a speed record for the detoxification of poisonous plants. Her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas, is the hero of Nell’s heart. Nell frequently finds herself standing in the doorway to Joan’s office despite herself, mesmerized by Joan’s elegance, success, and spiritual force.
Surrounded by Nell’s ex, her best friend, her best friend’s boyfriend, and Joan’s buffoonish husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. All six are burdened by desire and ambition, and as they collide on the university campus, their attractions set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak.
Meanwhile, Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study, and she begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love. In a dazzling and unforgettable voice, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight has written a spellbinding novel of emotional and intellectual intensity.
Critics Review
Sardonic and strange ... With its dark humour and loopy lyricism, it bewitches
Narrated with bad-ass gusto ... You could feast on Nell’s quips all day long
Cannily explores both the poisons and the antidotes of love, ambition, mentorship, and yearning, in prose so lively that I often found myself laughing with pleasure. Hex is some dark and joyous witchery
Nell is an expelled Ph.D. candidate in biological science who is trying to set a speed record for the detoxification of poisonous plants. She’s mesmerized by her mentor, Joan, and the woman’s elegance and success. Surrounded by Nell’s ex, her best friend, her best friend’s boyfriend and Joan’s husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the centre of a web of illicit relationships, grudges and obsessions
Strange and delightful … How could a reader - or a botany professor - not be charmed?
Academics tie themselves up into a pretzel of betrayal and desire in Rebecca Dinerstein Knight’s propulsive second book, which reads a tiny bit like AS Byatt after dark … This is a bold and highly charged book that makes entertainment seem like not such a bad word
Hex is the sort of novel that almost has its own smell – humid and loamy, like a body after a morning spent bent over a garden patch. It’s about Nell Barber, a recently expelled Ph.D. student secretly running her own experiments on poisonous botanicals in her apartment and vigorously lusting after her buttoned-up adviser and mentor. Sex practically pulses out of Nell as she fails her way into adulthood in this botanically entwined work of early-adult dissatisfaction
Swift-moving, sardonic … Dinerstein Knight paints a withering portrait of this web of toxic romances, and of the excesses of academia, while illustrating how both the heart and the mind can be broken and reshaped by changing circumstances
As precise as any scientific observation and far more tantalizing
Hex reads like a botanist's cross-breeding of The Secret History and Department of Speculation, full of brilliant and bodily obsession. Rebecca Dinerstein Knight is both a scientist and a magician, and she conjures this beautiful spell of a novel with total control
Hex is a book for those who feel adrift and solitary, for those who feel overwhelmed by themselves. Ultimately, it’s a story about harnessing what is out of control - and learning that perhaps the only way to control a poisonous thing is to first embrace it
A book that examines our natural and absolutely astounding reactions to each other. The language of this novel is so finely tailored, so elegant yet organic, so absorbing that it takes the reader a moment to realize that this is not just a deliciously engaging tale of what it is like to be social and sexual, but that this writing is an actual incantation in itself. It is a beautiful, spooky spell that divides and processes our innate potential for poison or pleasure
Hex is sexy, unhinged, revelatory, so smart it gives the reader whiplash. It works on you like the poisonous plants that wind through the storyline, until you’re as obsessed and intoxicated as the vivid characters that make up this love hexagon gone fascinatingly and beautifully wrong. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading a book or was so impressed by the wizardry of the language
Hex is a gem of a book: sharp and exquisite. Dinerstein Knight writes about women’s obsession with devastating wisdom, insight, and humor. It is pure pleasure to be under her spell
Hex is neon-bright and guided by a fierce, scintillating interest in the innermost chambers of the human heart, where melancholic and bright humors mingle together. In every line you hear the voice of a writer who knows how to lead you expertly into the place where the story is most alive: spooky, shifty, darkly funny, and delectable in every way
Offbeat yet entirely precise; original and universal. Hex is a nut with sweet meat and a poison shell, at once disarming and quietly devastating. This is a book for anyone who’s ever felt adrift, or felt alone, or loved someone out of reach, or all the above
Nell’s intensity and the hypnotic, second-person prose convincingly render the protagonist’s bewitched, self-destructive state. Readers who liked I Love Dick and want something more lurid will appreciate this
A joyfully deranged pleasure
A spellbinding novel of emotional and intellectual intensity
More from the same
Narrator
About xigxag
Experience the best audiobooks with xigxag, an innovative and user-friendly audiobook platform designed for seamless discovery, purchase, and enjoyment of your favorite titles. Our flexible pricing model offers bestselling audiobooks for less, providing affordable prices and the best audiobook deals without requiring a subscription. Perfect for gifting, xigxag also features convenient audiobook gift cards and in-app audiobook gifting options.
Beyond the listening experience, xigxag stands as an exciting alternative to big tech, embodying a strong commitment to sustainability and ethical practices. As the only B Corp certified UK audiobook service, we ensure a guilt-free listening experience from a leader in audiobook innovation.
Effortlessly search audiobooks, access honest audiobook reviews that evaluate both the content and narration, and easily discover hidden gems. Whether you prefer to download or stream top audiobook titles, xigxag provides the best possible listening experience anytime, anywhere, on the UK’s best independent audiobook app. Discover the future of audiobooks today.