Hestia Strikes a Match: A Novel

by Christine Grillo

Overview

A Best Book of the Year at NPR

A Must-Read at The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and The Orange County Register

“Steamy, smart, and hilarious.” —Oprah Daily

“Effervescent . . . Acerbically funny and tender . . . [A] supremely layered, emotionally and intellectually resonant novel for our time.” —Lauren LeBlanc, The Boston Globe

Christine Grillo’s Hestia Strikes a Match is the slyly funny story of a woman looking for love and friendship in the midst of a new American civil war.

The year is 2023, and things are bad—bad, but still not as bad as they could be. Hestia Harris is forty-two, abandoned by her husband (he left to fight for the Union cause), and estranged from her parents (they’re leaving for the Confederacy). Yes, the United States has collapsed into a second civil war and again it’s Unionists against Confederates, children against parents, friends against friends.

Hestia has left journalism (too much war reporting) for a job at a Baltimore retirement village on the Inner Harbor (lots of security). She’s single and adrift, save for her coworkers and Mildred, an eighty-four-year-old, thrice-happily-married resident who gleefully supports Hestia’s half-hearted but hopeful attempts to find love again in a time of chaos and disunion. She reckons with the big questions (How do we live in the midst of political collapse? How do we love people who believe terrible things?) and the little ones (How do I decorate a nonworking fireplace? Can I hook up with a mime?), all while wrestling with that simmering, roiling, occasionally boiling feeling that things are decidedly not okay, but we have to keep going, one foot in front of the other, because maybe, just maybe, we can still find the kinds of relationships that sustain a person through anything.

Christine Grillo’s Hestia Strikes a Match is an irreverent, incisive, laugh-out-loud interrogation of modern love of all kinds, in all its messy beauty. Equal parts wise and hilarious, it fills the heart, fortifies the spirit, and will surely help to fend off despair. In the face of the everyday wildness of our times, it asks and answers that newly constant question: How do we make a full, wonderfully ordinary life when the whole mad world is clattering down around us?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374609986
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	198,019
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Christine Grillo is a writer and an editor whose short fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Southern Review, and LIT Magazine. Her nonfiction covers food systems, agriculture, and climate change, and has been published in outlets such as The New York Times, CityLab, Audubon, NextTribe, and Real Simple. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Christine Grillo is a writer and editor covering food systems, agriculture, and climate change, whose nonfiction has been published in outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic: CityLab, Audubon, NextTribe, and Real Simple. Her short fiction has appeared in Story Quarterly, The Southern Review, and LIT. Hestia Strikes a Match is her debut novel.

Editorial Reviews

02/06/2023

Grillo’s cheerful and misanthropic debut follows the romantic and ideological feints of a 40-something woman during the second American Civil War. It’s 2023 and a dozen states have seceded to form the New Confederated States of America, while what’s left of the Union limps along under the command of its first Black Madame President. Hestia Harris, a writer, tries to avoid the hordes of flag-toting Confederates trolling the libs in her precarious border state. Having heard nothing from her estranged husband in the two years since he left to join a unionist paramilitary group, Hestia turns to dating apps, screening cringeworthy profiles for Confederate leanings. The civil war element doesn’t yield much of a plot, though an act of Confederate terrorism proves consequential, and as Hestia adjusts to the new normal, she finds time for sex while the ruins of democracy smolder in the background. Occasionally, the setup feels half-baked, though for the most part Grillo pulls off a clever satire of life in a divided country. At its best, this is Bridget Jones’s Diary for the post-MAGA era. Agent: Naomi Eisenbeiss, Inkwell Management. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

[Christine] Grillo’s witty debut novel answers an unusual question: How does one survive a midlife crisis during a civil war? [An] imaginative tale.”
—Becky Meloan, The Washington Post

“For fans of Maria Semple’s Bernadette, Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant, and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones, Hestia is just as unique, at once brutally honest, self-deprecating, and committed to forging her own path . . . Juxtaposing intellect, wit, and positivity, this pithy satire sheds an imaginative light on two things that invariably bring people together or divide them forever: love and politics.”
—Anne Eliot Feldman, Washington Independent Review of Books

“[Christine Grillo’s] sharp, sparkling debut is a timely reminder of what connects people even in a country tearing itself apart: the desire to love.”
—Allison Cho, Booklist

“Quick-witted and big-hearted . . . [Hestia] sparkles with humor.”
—Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness

“[A] clever satire of life in a divided country . . . Bridget Jones’s Diary for the post-MAGA era.”
—Publishers Weekly

“[A] sharply observed and written tale.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Christine Grillo’s debut novel is a wry look at our it-could-happen-here dis-Union, one that might just remind us all to take ourselves, and our arguments, less seriously. Great fun.”
—Alice McDermott, author of What About the Baby?

“Warning: Do not pick up Hestia Strikes a Match without clearing your calendar. I could not put down this pitch-perfect dark comedy. I fell in love, and so will you.”
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

“Hestia Strikes a Match made me laugh out loud and tear up at the same time, as it combines wry satire with a moving story of how we form bonds of love and friend-ship even as the world around us is crumbling. Hestia is everything I could wish for in a character—quirky, smart, infuriating, broken, wise, and funny as hell.”
—Angie Kim, author of Miracle Creek

“Astonishing. Intense. Funny. Smart. There are so many things to root for here. Will America win? Will Hestia find her match? Will the dear members of Hestia’s community survive? Hestia Strikes a Match is the novel I didn’t know I needed. I loved it.”
—Jessica Francis Kane, author of Rules for Visiting

“Extremely wise and deeply funny, this debut gives us a riotously irreverent, effortlessly firecracking pair of Socratic dialogues: one between generations debating how to find love or whether to seek it at all, and the other between citizens trying to figure out how to save their country.”
—Carlene Bauer, author of Girls They Write Songs About

“A rom-com about the ups and downs of dating, but it’s set during the next American civil war in the very near future. Right?! This very funny, very sad and sweet, and very Baltimore book is about finding connection in a world where everything has been turned inside out. Sound familiar? Just read it: it’s wonderful, it’s relevant, it’s so good.”
—Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You

From the Publisher

2023-02-08
Looking for love during America’s Second Civil War can be tricky.

The mutation of the nation’s current political dysfunction into actual civil war is fast becoming a go-to setting for contemporary fiction, but debut novelist Grillo puts a new spin on it by focusing on the romantic misadventures of Hestia, whose husband recently left her to join a pro-Union paramilitary group. The marriage was already shaky, so she’s checking out online dating sites but finds that it’s hard to avoid flirting with guys on the other side. Hestia lives in Baltimore, and there are plenty of Confederate sympathizers in the border state of Maryland. Her own parents are just about to move to one of the 12 seceded states, and it becomes clear over the course of the novel that their dismissive comments about the United States Hestia supports are part of a lifelong pattern of undermining her that clearly contributes to her tendency to eventually find reasons to dump any man unwise enough to show that he likes her. Grillo deftly spins a busy plot that also include Hestia’s friendship with Mildred, an elderly resident at the retirement village where she works, and her growing attachment to her brother-in-law, Jamie, who is raising three kids on his own after his wife was killed in a Confederate terrorist attack. The author’s undeniable point is that daily life goes on even in extreme circumstances; people choose restaurants and places to walk based on the updates in their Safe Zones app, but they continue to eat out and spend time outdoors just the same. The salty comments of Mildred and the village residents participating in Hestia’s oral history project provide welcome relief from Hestia’s often mopey narration, and the characters and social backdrop are equally well drawn, but in the end it’s hard to see why we should care.

A sharply observed and written tale that never seems to add up to much.

Kirkus Reviews