Hum (Metatron Press, 2018)
Hum follows a young woman whose life is changed forever when, after being raped, she gives birth to a hummingbird. She must learn to cope with not only what happened to her, but with the bird’s persistent, agitating presence in her life. Natalia Hero’s debut is a beautiful and tormented magical-realist novella about surviving trauma, reclaiming oneself and what it means to heal.
audiobook available now via bookdance
version française: Colibri (Marchand de feuilles, 2020) tr. Annie Pronovost
Praise for Hum
“Hero’s debut is a work of stunning allegory. Magical thinking made real – darting, thrumming, trembling the air around it.” –SEAN MICHAELS, author of Us Conductors, winner of the 2014 Giller Prize for fiction
“Hum is an urgent story of the ways we survive, externalize, and heal trauma through the ever-present humming of living with a secret. It’s an unforgettable wow of a debut.” –Daily Public
“Extraordinary sensitivity.” –Artichaut Magazine
” Natalia Hero’s Hum is deceptively simple, its every scene and encounter whittled down to a minimal core. […] Hero’s narrative of trauma, survival, and healing is complex, raw, non-linear, and anything but easy. ” –Montreal Review of Books
“Fiction heals because Hero has crafted a balm. One that, with the right kind of attention, could end up on bedside tables in all the homes of our current cultural climate. Its prose leaves no room for denialists– [Hum] is a very real animal we can hold in our hands. One that demands to be fed, sheltered, preserved, or set free.” –Québec Reads (currently switching domain hosts)
“Hero’s Hum is a novella that naturally finds its place within contemporary society by introducing a distinct voice to the literary scene, giving its reader a protagonist that is easily and almost terrifyingly recognizable.” –The Coil
“It really feels like the most important book that I have read in a really long time. If you’re lucky enough to be curious to know what it feels like to survive sexual assault, I’ve never read anything that captures the experience so fully. They should teach this book in schools. They probably will.” -Lucy K. Shaw, The Shabby Doll Reader
“Reading this book feels, somehow, like an act of hope.” –Augur
“Un récit qui fait beaucoup d’économie de mots, mais qui en dit tout de même des tonnes.” –La Presse
“La beauté de cet ouvrage, c’est qu’en plus de parvenir à ses fins, c’est-à-dire de trouver une porte qui mène la protagoniste vers la guérison, il laisse planer un constat, aussi discret que puissant : la reconstruction est plurielle et peut prendre des formes multiples.”
-Les libraires
“Un premier roman coup de poing, féroce et poétique à la fois.”
“Sublime et tourmenté”
-Marie-France Bornais, Journal de Montréal
Natalia Hero 