The Unwritten Book: An Investigation

By Samantha Hunt

“One of our most interesting and bold writers . . . [offers] a characteristically wild effort that defies genre distinctions, flits from the profound to the mundane with fierce intelligence and searching restlessness, and at its best, delves deep into the recesses of the human heart with courageous abandon . . . An intoxicating blend of humor and pathos.” —Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe

“Eerie, profound, and daring, this is a book only the inimitable Hunt could write.”
—Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire


From Samantha Hunt, the award-winning author of The Dark Dark, comes The Unwritten Book, her first work of nonfiction, a genre-bending creation that explores the importance of books, the idea of haunting, and messages from beyond

I carry each book I’ve ever read with me, just as I carry my dead—those things that aren’t really there, those things that shape everything I am.

A genre-bending work of nonfiction, Samantha Hunt’s The Unwritten Book explores ghosts, ghost stories, and haunting, in the broadest sense of each. What is it to be haunted, to be a ghost, to die, to live, to read? Books are ghosts; reading is communion with the dead. Alcohol is a way of communing, too, as well as a way of dying.

Each chapter gathers subjects that haunt: dead people, the forest, the towering library of all those books we’ll never have time to read or write. Hunt, like a mad crossword puzzler, looks for patterns and clues. Through literary criticism, history, family history, and memoir, inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and many others, Hunt explores motherhood, hoarding, legacies of addiction, grief, how we insulate ourselves from the past, how we misinterpret the world. Nestled within her inquiry is a very special ghost book, an incomplete manuscript about people who can fly without wings, written by her father and found in his desk just days after he died. What secret messages might his work reveal? What wisdom might she distill from its unfinished pages?

Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9780374604929

Samantha Hunt

Samantha Hunt is the author of the story collection The Dark Dark and the novels Mr. Splitfoot, The Invention of Everything Else, and The Seas. Hunt is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 prize, and the St. Francis College Literary Prize, and she was a finalist for the Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She lives in upstate New York.

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Reviews for The Unwritten Book

[pomo58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt is an unusual (in the very best sense of the word) book. Memoir, annotated manuscript, musings and mental wanderings, and every bit of it engaging.This is one of those books I would normally have made a point of reading more slowly. I happened to be in a situation where I couldn't so it was a quick read. It is wonderful as a quick read but there is no way to go off on my own tangents when I read it in a day. It provided a lot to think about and touched on every emotion. So I waited a couple of days and a couple of other books then went back and worked it into my normal reading approach, which is as one of several books that which allows me to go through it slowly. Turns out going through it once fairly quickly then coming back to it worked very well. I knew which parts I wanted to dwell in (possibility) and which ones I wanted to set the book aside for a while and just think about what the words meant to me.While there are a lot of references to literary works and popular culture the book itself is down to earth. Most of the works will be familiar to some degree and when they aren't Hunt makes her use of them clear enough that the reader's familiarity, or lack of, won't negatively impact the flow. And flow is very much the right word. This is a book that will reward the reader who lets it take them on a journey. Don't overthink where you're going, just think about where you are at any moment in the book. Thus, go with the flow.Ideal for readers who gain as much from questions asked as statements made. My guess is that much of what I got from the book will be different from what you will get, and that is very much a positive.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.