“Phil and Sibyl Samuelson and their three children are at the center of this deeply satisfying novel, but Huneven’s leaps through time and stories provide constant surprise and delights. The reader finds herself in the leafy green of California, then Saudi Arabia for a business trip, then by the side of an old woman who has unexpectedly fallen in love. We go into the cul-de-sacs of these characters’ lives, experiencing moments they might not write down in their own biographies, but which shape them forever. Reading the novel feels like watching a master painter at work: color is laid down, forms emerge, and then at the end your breath is taken away, because it has all come together.”

“Bug Hollow crackles with compassion and propulsion, offering the layered and propulsive pleasures of the long view—the evolving fortunes and dynamics of a family across decades—without ever surrendering the texture of their days or the pulse of their trippy hearts, their capacity to surprise themselves and us. I inhaled this book in a weekend, grateful to feel it simmering and swirling inside me, regretting only that it would ever end. Michelle Huneven is a treasure, and Bug Hollow gives us the song of her sentences and the glorious telescope of her attention with a whittled, nimble intensity that took my breath away.
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“Michelle Huneven’s wondrous and intimate journey of the Samuelson family embedded me with their deepest secrets, greatest loves, epic heartbreaks, and a grief that touched them all for generations. Huneven’s piercing observations of moments big and small left me feeling not just their witness, but more a distant relative emotionally invested in their outcome. I’m going to carry the Samuelsons in my heart for a very long time.”

“Michelle Huneven is such an elegant, watchful writer, and she has immense love and compassion for her characters. This is a novel that lays bare the tenderness of the world, exploring its breadth and smallness at once. I adored it.”

“Bug Hollow is a deeply immersive novel about a middle class, Californian family, with its closely held secrets, loves and tragedy. With the breath of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles and the intimate ironic pleasures of Barbara Pym, Huneven spans the American century and at the center is a mysterious woman; brilliant, mean, held back by her time, harsh, and beloved. I couldn’t put it down.

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