debut novella, 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.
“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
PRESS
REVIEW – AUGUR MAG “Reading this book feels, somehow, like an act of hope.”
REVIEW – ARTICHAUT MAGAZINE [français] “Extraordinary sensitivity”
REVIEW – THE MONTREAL REVIEW OF BOOKS “Hero’s narrative of trauma, survival, and healing is complex, raw, non-linear, and anything but easy.”
REVIEW – QUÉBEC READS “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—the book is a very real animal we can hold in our hands. One that demands to be fed, sheltered, preserved, or set free.”
INTERVIEW – THE SHABBY DOLL READER (Issue 46, October 2018) “I interviewed Natalia
Hero about her new novella, Hum, which is a stunning, empowering new book out
now from Metatron. 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.”
LIST – THE COIL MAGAZINE MOST ANTICIPATED SEPTEMBER 2018 BOOKS
FICTION
Natalia Hero
Novella | 104 Pages
978–1–988355–15–3 | First Edition | $16.00 CAD
Metatron Press | Montreal, Canada
Natalia Hero 