Breakaway Books

Authored by Michelle Huneven; Published June 2025; Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bug Hollow is less a cohesive narrative than several vignettes about a sprawling, confusing family, glued together in a less than linear fashion. This is not the novel to pick up for a point A to point B story.

Bug Hollow tells the story of the Samuelson family, an ordinary nuclear family with a son and two daughters. However, over several decades, the family faces tragic deaths and secret affairs, and the family tree begins to sprout branches in unexpected places. Mom Sybil, father Phil, and their three kids pop in and out of relationships while running away from their worst secrets and demons. 

The vignettes that make up this novel are not quite told in chronological order, and that threw me off from the start. The book starts out with the story of Ellis, the eldest son who effectively runs away from home with a new flame the summer before he starts college, and the first chapter ends with his accidental death. I expected to then see the characters processing their grief and trauma, but instead, the novel leapt forward to an entirely different period of time and an entirely different point of view. This type of jump happens repeatedly throughout the novel, and it made for a less-than-smooth reading experience. At the same time, it propelled me forward to learn precisely what had happened to these characters that I grown fond of, even if I did not adore them.

Well—most of the characters, anyway. Teacher Sybil, an untreated alcoholic, is difficult to love from the start, but the difference she makes in her students’ lives puts even her in an endearing light. Her husband Phil is much easier to frame as the true protagonist of the novel, whose extremely relaxed and logical personality makes him immediately sympathetic. Even his affair doesn’t quite manage to tarnish him in the eyes of his (by then adult) children, as far as I could tell. As the family grows messier and more difficult to track with illicit affairs and half siblings, each member of the family seems to grow more and more ambivalent about the bonds between them. Perhaps because of the lack of emotional buildup, it doesn’t feel like there was a natural beginning, middle or end—just a slice of this multigenerational family’s story.

Bug Hollow feels like a compilation of snippets from a family memoir. It’s a fascinating look at how family can grow apart or together, but certainly not a narrative in the traditional, linear sense.