In Midwestern flyover country, the stories of More Hell weave a rich and sometimes comic tapestry of longing, addiction, sex, and loss. The wild cast of rural characters navigate a fast-changing world from their vantage point in a place unaccustomed to such change.
This collection swirls perpetually around the hope and animosity of Neil and Maria Kenning’s fracturing marriage, while introducing readers to the voices around them:
an autistic woman who imagines her relationship as a fragile glass house;
a little girl who plays with sentient nativity figurines while her mother’s infidelity unfolds for all to see;
a young man grieving the deaths of his great aunt and a blue-collar boy he had feelings for in high school.
More Hell presents characters struggling for self-actualization and personal identity in a space painfully confined by its geography.
al-Sirgany’s writing paints a nuanced picture, challenging stereotypes and revealing the depth and diversity hidden beneath the surface of a seemingly monochrome landscape. The cast of More Hell will resonate long after the final page.
What Readers Are Saying
"A Proustian cubist could paint me” says a character in More Hell. And it can be hell to jaggedly put back together what we want to remember, only to face what we wanted to forget. Adam al-Sirgany’s stories show us that the worst of our bored youth and the rages of adulthood are seeds nevertheless and they can sprout into something new and altogether necessary, “half out of your sadness, half out of other people’s fictions.”
- Manuel Muñoz, author of The Consequences, MacArthur Genius
[T]his isn’t another book about dwindling opportunity or the ravages of opioid addiction. These stories explore the challenges of figuring out who you are, being seen for who you are, and being accepted for who you are; not only by others, but also by yourself. Often failing, rather than succeeding, at all of those things. Adam’s stories are...always a worthwhile journey.
- Dennis Gage, famous mustache, host of My Classic Car
In the tradition of Winesburg, Ohio, Adam al-Sirgany has given us a truly lovely collection of portraits and stories. Taken together they weave together a set of characters and places with a quiet urgency. The figures we meet in More Hell are presented with matter-of-fact poignancy as they navigate everyday disappointments while trying to preserve some measure of their dignity.
- Steven Conn, author of The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural American For What It Is - and Isn't
Like the author himself, funnier than the author would describe it.
- TW Blankenship, acclaimed Mississippi River rafting guide
[W]eird' and magical and realistic and scary and whimsical all at once...
- Nicole Schmidt, editor and poet