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One Morning
One Morning is a gothic novel that tells the story of Gour Borough, Pennsylvania via the subjective and interwoven perspectives of twelve women who live there.
A middle-aged taxidermist who indulges in arson.
An ailing hostage.
A mother who stopped searching for her lost child.
A disoriented shepherdess.
A feral tween huntress.
An exhausted wife with a secret bank account.
An innocent girl with a bounty on her head.
An untethered orphan.
A gleefully passive murderer.
An underemployed geologist.
A scheming hotel proprietor in a ghoulish costume.
A teenager with a dead pen pal.
Taking place over a single twelve hour time period, the book moves in real time as the characters’ lives intertwine, their fates soaked in and stained by the polluted waters of the long-abandoned coalmines that crumble below their town.
One Morning embodies the phrase, to sonder, that is, to realise that everyone around us leads lives as rich, haunting, and complex as our own.
A middle-aged taxidermist who indulges in arson.
An ailing hostage.
A mother who stopped searching for her lost child.
A disoriented shepherdess.
A feral tween huntress.
An exhausted wife with a secret bank account.
An innocent girl with a bounty on her head.
An untethered orphan.
A gleefully passive murderer.
An underemployed geologist.
A scheming hotel proprietor in a ghoulish costume.
A teenager with a dead pen pal.
Taking place over a single twelve hour time period, the book moves in real time as the characters’ lives intertwine, their fates soaked in and stained by the polluted waters of the long-abandoned coalmines that crumble below their town.
One Morning embodies the phrase, to sonder, that is, to realise that everyone around us leads lives as rich, haunting, and complex as our own.
244 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2020
2 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
Jessica Hagy
27 books61 followersJessica Hagy is best known for her Webby Award–winning blog Indexed. Her cartoons regularly appear in the New York Times, and she writes an online column for Forbes. Ms. Hagy lives with her family in Seattle.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 8, 2020
Jessica Hagy’s One Morning tells the story of twelve women in Gour Borough, Pennsylvania, a crumbling little mining town that’s built above long-abandoned coal mines which are now slowly filling up with poisonous water, eroding the foundations of the town. The narratives unfold in real-time over the course of twelve hours, it is an intimate look at the women’s psychological state and aspirations as the small borough fall apart around them.
Gour Borough is the ghostly remains of an American town, a shell of its former self, its days of mining prosperity is a hollow memory that’s filling up with noxious water. Its golden age seems like a faded dream to the inhabitants who can now barely make a living. The people of Gour Borough resemble ghosts desperately trying to leave before it corrodes under their feet. It feels as if they are forever trapped in the town’s memory, gradually poisoned, and mutated by its past. The spirit of the place lies heavily over the novel and not only does Gour Borough feel like a real place, a heavy atmosphere of desperation and loneliness creeps over the reader as one gets more and more familiar with the borough.
After just a couple of pages, it’s obvious you’re in good hands; Hagy’s prose pulls you into the narrative almost immediately, with characters that are raw, believable, and interesting. She delves into their emotional state and portrays their traumas as authentic and at times devastating. The twelve women read as rich and complex through sparse, yet efficient prose, describing not only their strange idiosyncrasies but also the hidden turmoil that lurks within their minds. The women have been held down, refused to realize themselves, and while the lingering doom of the borough translates into failure for its residents, it’s the women who’re struggling to keep it all together. There is a darkness here that seems bottled up, waiting to spill out like the polluted water that runs below the sad little town, seeping into the blood and bones of the community, poisoning, and corrupting them.
Hagy introduces characters in a very interesting way, setting up wonderful moments of recognition throughout the narrative, making the reader anxious to learn more about the characters and their eventual fate. There is an incredible interconnectivity throughout the novel; broken souls in a small community who interact with each other, often accidentally, trying to find some meaning in the destructive force that surrounds them. How the stories are interwoven feels remarkable, and it all falls into place as you’re reading the novel.
It’s been some time since I felt the emotional and psychological punch of a novel like One Morning delivers, making me care about the characters and wanting to get invested in their stories. Jessica Hagy’s debut novel is a layered and impressive work, both beautiful and harrowing, in short, a very satisfying book.
The book itself is as beautiful as they come from Tartarus Press, this one is smaller, more compact with a glorious, ominous binding hidden behind their usual cream coloured dust jacket. This proves (yet again) that the fine folks at Tartarus are dedicated not only to publishing the old masters of the ghostly and strange genre but also distinct and powerful new voices in fiction like Jessica Hagy’s. The first chapter is out as a free PDF on the Tartarus Press website if you want to sample this delightful novel.
Gour Borough is the ghostly remains of an American town, a shell of its former self, its days of mining prosperity is a hollow memory that’s filling up with noxious water. Its golden age seems like a faded dream to the inhabitants who can now barely make a living. The people of Gour Borough resemble ghosts desperately trying to leave before it corrodes under their feet. It feels as if they are forever trapped in the town’s memory, gradually poisoned, and mutated by its past. The spirit of the place lies heavily over the novel and not only does Gour Borough feel like a real place, a heavy atmosphere of desperation and loneliness creeps over the reader as one gets more and more familiar with the borough.
After just a couple of pages, it’s obvious you’re in good hands; Hagy’s prose pulls you into the narrative almost immediately, with characters that are raw, believable, and interesting. She delves into their emotional state and portrays their traumas as authentic and at times devastating. The twelve women read as rich and complex through sparse, yet efficient prose, describing not only their strange idiosyncrasies but also the hidden turmoil that lurks within their minds. The women have been held down, refused to realize themselves, and while the lingering doom of the borough translates into failure for its residents, it’s the women who’re struggling to keep it all together. There is a darkness here that seems bottled up, waiting to spill out like the polluted water that runs below the sad little town, seeping into the blood and bones of the community, poisoning, and corrupting them.
Hagy introduces characters in a very interesting way, setting up wonderful moments of recognition throughout the narrative, making the reader anxious to learn more about the characters and their eventual fate. There is an incredible interconnectivity throughout the novel; broken souls in a small community who interact with each other, often accidentally, trying to find some meaning in the destructive force that surrounds them. How the stories are interwoven feels remarkable, and it all falls into place as you’re reading the novel.
It’s been some time since I felt the emotional and psychological punch of a novel like One Morning delivers, making me care about the characters and wanting to get invested in their stories. Jessica Hagy’s debut novel is a layered and impressive work, both beautiful and harrowing, in short, a very satisfying book.
The book itself is as beautiful as they come from Tartarus Press, this one is smaller, more compact with a glorious, ominous binding hidden behind their usual cream coloured dust jacket. This proves (yet again) that the fine folks at Tartarus are dedicated not only to publishing the old masters of the ghostly and strange genre but also distinct and powerful new voices in fiction like Jessica Hagy’s. The first chapter is out as a free PDF on the Tartarus Press website if you want to sample this delightful novel.
July 12, 2020
One Morning is the debut novel by illustrator Jessica Hagy. Set over the course of a single day, the novel follows one dozen women for one hour each and it quickly becomes apparent that their lives will intertwine in ways often initially unimaginable but eventually tragically inevitable.
Each character receives their own star billing and an individual chapter dedicated to their life for one hour in the day. This could make for a disjointed narrative without a clear progression if written by lesser talented author. Jessica Hagy’s narrative style is so effective and jarring that by the middle of each chapter, rather than feeling sated, the reader ravenously awaits the next course and must go on to the next chapter and the next character.
The characters are eminently believable and with great skill the author has almost each character bounce between the extremes of the value arc found in Society Genre novels, Personal power and Impotence. At times the revelation of the status of the characters, whether impotence, vulnerability, or personal power, are not revealed until later chapters, another example of complex and impressive story telling.
The prose is often gloomy, matching the setting for the novel, a now decrepit coal mining town in Pennsylvania.
From one characters’ life: “She it too sickened by tragedy to pretend that the world can be a decent place, and she is rightly assumed to be contagious. People avoid her because they worry her despair is contagious, and they’re correct.”
Despair and tragedy are running themes throughout the novel and each character’s life, but so is a glimmer of hope, a small ray of sunshine trying to break through the wall of gray clouds enveloping the coal mining town. Some characters have more hope and fight their dreary plight more than others:
“The sweetest cherries grow from trees planted where outhouses used to be right? She pounds her steering wheel, victoriously hissing, Let’s do this. Let’s do this. I’m doing this.”
After all, isn’t that a truism throughout the entirety of human existence? As Victor Frankl shows us in Man’s Search for Meaning, individuals in a group found in the same horrific circumstances can react and respond in diametrically opposed ways.
While some of our protagonists in One Morning are searching for meaning and have brighter prospects than others who seem to accept their fate with resignation, one can’t escape the eventual fate that befalls us all.
“She smells it before she sees it. Black smoke coming from the kitchen. The fire alarm howls. The cookies have burned. They’re carbon now. Space dust, star-exhaust. Just like every other moving part, dead, alive, or dangling somewhere in between, molecular pawns in the universe long game.”
One Morning reminds us that while we are all molecular pawns in a long game, that which we make of the short game is entirely within our control.
Each character receives their own star billing and an individual chapter dedicated to their life for one hour in the day. This could make for a disjointed narrative without a clear progression if written by lesser talented author. Jessica Hagy’s narrative style is so effective and jarring that by the middle of each chapter, rather than feeling sated, the reader ravenously awaits the next course and must go on to the next chapter and the next character.
The characters are eminently believable and with great skill the author has almost each character bounce between the extremes of the value arc found in Society Genre novels, Personal power and Impotence. At times the revelation of the status of the characters, whether impotence, vulnerability, or personal power, are not revealed until later chapters, another example of complex and impressive story telling.
The prose is often gloomy, matching the setting for the novel, a now decrepit coal mining town in Pennsylvania.
From one characters’ life: “She it too sickened by tragedy to pretend that the world can be a decent place, and she is rightly assumed to be contagious. People avoid her because they worry her despair is contagious, and they’re correct.”
Despair and tragedy are running themes throughout the novel and each character’s life, but so is a glimmer of hope, a small ray of sunshine trying to break through the wall of gray clouds enveloping the coal mining town. Some characters have more hope and fight their dreary plight more than others:
“The sweetest cherries grow from trees planted where outhouses used to be right? She pounds her steering wheel, victoriously hissing, Let’s do this. Let’s do this. I’m doing this.”
After all, isn’t that a truism throughout the entirety of human existence? As Victor Frankl shows us in Man’s Search for Meaning, individuals in a group found in the same horrific circumstances can react and respond in diametrically opposed ways.
While some of our protagonists in One Morning are searching for meaning and have brighter prospects than others who seem to accept their fate with resignation, one can’t escape the eventual fate that befalls us all.
“She smells it before she sees it. Black smoke coming from the kitchen. The fire alarm howls. The cookies have burned. They’re carbon now. Space dust, star-exhaust. Just like every other moving part, dead, alive, or dangling somewhere in between, molecular pawns in the universe long game.”
One Morning reminds us that while we are all molecular pawns in a long game, that which we make of the short game is entirely within our control.
July 21, 2020
A deftly constructed novel, showing acute psychological insight via twelve distinct perspectives all overshadowed by a decaying landscape. Each character is vividly portrayed in a succinct chapter of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would eagerly read more by the author.
August 8, 2020
A dark portrait of a decaying town, written in 12 linked stories, each focussing on one female character. The connections unravel as we read on, and the horror is revealed. Don't read it alone in the dark, if your house is a long way from anyone else's.
August 12, 2023
Hagy, Jessica - One Morning
“Did you enjoy that book?” asked Zelda.
“Yes, quite a bit. The book has twelve chapters, one for each hour of that day, for each woman. “Midnight: Helena,” “One in the morning: Ruth,” “Two in the morning: Agnes” …
“We read what happens with each during that particular hour, a bit of back story, interior monologue, possible trajectory. By chapter three, you start to grasp how the women, their stories, weave and intersect.”
“I love books like that!” said Zelda.
“And this is masterfully constructed,” I said. “Better, it occurs in a part of the world you know.”
“Oh?”
“An area outside Pittsburgh.”
“I’ve never been there,” she said.
“A pocket community in Appalachia, where coal has been dug out to where the land is unstable, the water is toxic, and the mining jobs have dried up.”
“The same mountain range where you grew up," she said. "Where I’ve visited dozens of times. Yes, I know the area. And I love the size of the book. It is perfect for holding. Set it aside, I want to read it.”
“Did you enjoy that book?” asked Zelda.
“Yes, quite a bit. The book has twelve chapters, one for each hour of that day, for each woman. “Midnight: Helena,” “One in the morning: Ruth,” “Two in the morning: Agnes” …
“We read what happens with each during that particular hour, a bit of back story, interior monologue, possible trajectory. By chapter three, you start to grasp how the women, their stories, weave and intersect.”
“I love books like that!” said Zelda.
“And this is masterfully constructed,” I said. “Better, it occurs in a part of the world you know.”
“Oh?”
“An area outside Pittsburgh.”
“I’ve never been there,” she said.
“A pocket community in Appalachia, where coal has been dug out to where the land is unstable, the water is toxic, and the mining jobs have dried up.”
“The same mountain range where you grew up," she said. "Where I’ve visited dozens of times. Yes, I know the area. And I love the size of the book. It is perfect for holding. Set it aside, I want to read it.”
February 2, 2024
I found myself engrossed by this tale. It sucks you in from the first chapter with a dark and ominous taxidermist (my favorite character who deserves her own book) and the beautifully written prose that keeps you turning the page. Recommend to anyone looking for a gothic novel or wanting to explore grief a bit through the lives of 12 different women.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews