Listen to a sample
Mr. Splitfoot
- Author
- Samantha Hunt
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 29 March 2016
- Run Time
- 11 hours 24 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
A contemporary gothic from an author in the company of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.
Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece Cora finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who—or what—has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?
In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, and the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural—and vice versa.
Critics Review
-
“Zombies are out, ghosts are in. Ms. Hunt…taps into the cultural zeitgeist with a new novel blurring the natural and supernatural.”
Wall Street Journal
-
“Hypnotic and glowing.”
New York Times Book Review
-
“The historical and the fantastical entwine like snakes in…this blend of romance and phantoms.”
Washington Post
-
“An American gothic fever dream.”
Chicago Tribune
See more reviews See fewer reviews
-
“An escapist adventure, a gothic page-turner that is also so finely crafted that you’ll feel enriched as well as transported for having read it.”
Esquire
-
“An intriguing mystery with clues, suspense, enigmas galore, and an exhilarating, witty, poignant paean to the unexplainable, the unsolvable, the irreducibly mysterious.”
Boston Globe
-
“Ethereal…The book deftly straddles the slippery line between fantasy and reality…This spellbinder is storytelling at its best.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
-
“Motherhood, religious zeal, poverty, predation, and the frailty yet relentlessness of life are among the rich themes that Hunt explores here.”
Booklist (starred review)
-
“A truly fantastic novel in which the blurring of natural and supernatural creates a stirring, visceral conclusion.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
-
“Readers…by joining the protagonists’ journey will discover that what they imagine they know about someone is often quite different from the reality.”
School Library Journal
User Reviews
No reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Samantha Hunt
- Narrator
- Cassandra Campbell, Emily Woo Zeller
- Duration
- 11 hours 24 minutes
- Release Date
- 29 March 2016
- ISBN
- 9781504722612
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary, Fiction: general and literary, Occult fiction
Synopsis
A contemporary gothic from an author in the company of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece Cora finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who—or what—has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, and the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural—and vice versa.
About xigxag
xigxag is an independent, UK-based audiobook platform and the UK's only B Corp certified audiobook company. We offer nearly 150,000 audiobooks, all with professional human narration. No AI-generated voices. xigxag is rated an Ethical Consumer Best Buy for audiobooks and a top-rated ethical bookshop.
There is no subscription. You buy the audiobooks you want, you own them permanently, and prices start at $13.95. The more you listen over the year, the less you pay per book, and there is always a selection in Listen for Less from $7.95. You can also send audiobooks as gifts using our audiobook gift cards or in-app gifting.
Every audiobook on xigxag has honest reviews covering both the book and the narration, and our community features make it easy to share what you are listening to, discover what others recommend, and find your next listen.
Download or stream on iOS, Android, or in your browser. Browse the full catalogue at xigxag.co.uk.