“Properly corralling and weaponizing the past is, for a work of literary fiction, a complicated balance between rendering characters with the requisite complexity and depth of a literary work while maintaining a verisimilitude of and commitment to the temporal setting in which it lives—in other words, between the interior and the exterior. In her latest work, H. S. Cross proves herself quite adept at the treading of this particular needle, crafting Amanda at once as a mysterious romance, a psychological portrait of two fractured protagonists, and an utterly convincing, inside-out look at an England navigating the heat and the shadows of The Great War. Her task is not an easy one, but Cross has a secret weapon: a profound willingness to risk losing her reader, such that she manages never to do so...
That approach of working inside-out, of seeing the world of her heroine and hero first, with psychological depth and rigor, allows Cross to realize a propellent, engaging, complex work of literature that inhabits, rather than uses, its time period. In this way Amanda, like history itself, is truly original.”
Read the full review in the Chicago Review of Books.
