The White Hot

A Novel

By: Quiara Alegría Hudes

Narrated by: Daphne Rubin-Vega, Quiara Alegría Hudes

The story of a runaway mother’s ten days of freedom—and the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenment—from Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes.

“The White Hot has the effect of pressing your hand to a barbed live wire. April’s is one of the most memorable voices I’ve encountered in recent fiction. . . . [A] brilliant depiction of a woman learning to transform her rage into something resembling transcendence.”—The New York Times Book Review

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, OPRAH DAILY, KIRKUS REVIEWS, BOOKPAGE

April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just . . . walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest—an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.

The White Hot takes the form of a letter from mother to daughter about a moment of abandonment that would stretch from ten days to ten years—an explanation, but not an apology. Hudes narrates April’s story—spiritual and sexy, fierce and funny—with delicate lyricism and tough love. Just as April finds in her painful and absurd sojourn the key to freeing herself and her family from a cage of generational trauma, so Hudes turns April’s stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.

Beautifully written

Within the first 10-20 mins or so of listening, it was apparent that Quiara Hudes is a very talented writer. Beautiful, empathetic and captivating descriptions. Her writing reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Ocean Vuong. All heart. You can see it and feel everything.

Where she lost me though is the length of time it took to paint the picture and get to ‘ and then what happened?’ About two hours into the book, I started skipping forward. Anything still being talked about or described after 3 mins. was fast-forwarded. I just wanted to pick up where the characters were interacting and have less April hearing herself talk. There’s no way Noel would read all that in a letter.
While I can totally appreciate the brilliance of the writing itself, story-wise, I just needed the flow of April’s life, the ‘what did she do next’, to unfold faster.