"A supremely tense debut, Conner Habib’s Hawk Mountain channels Patricia Highsmith by way of Hitchcock....Habib builds the sense of dread with slow, carefully meted out notes of obsession and intuition."
"Hawk Mountain is deft horror, made of precise strikes into our most vulnerable psychic terrain… Finally, a horror story that knows cisheteropatriarchy is the villain!"
"A brilliantly disturbing, expertly crafted literary noir that will stick with you long after you put it down. Conner Habib has written a flawless meditation on the fruitless, but eternally human, effort to kill off the parts of ourselves we cannot love—literally and metaphorically. I love this book."
"Conner Habib’s debut novel is a bleak, dark adrenaline rush."
"Habib ramps up the paranoia to Highsmithian levels."— Laura Wilson Guardian
"A supremely tense debut, Conner Habib’s Hawk Mountain channels Patricia Highsmith by way of Hitchcock....Habib builds the sense of dread with slow, carefully meted out notes of obsession and intuition."— CrimeReads
"A menacing page-turner....Habib has created a small but visceral world, terrifying in its realism and heartbreaking in its portrayal. Gaslighting, masculinity and cycles of abuse are all skillfully handled in a story that is, to put it lightly, not for the faint of heart."— Andrea Cleary Business Post Ireland
"This masterful debut explores the darkest matter with a surprising and unnerving relatability and is a page-turner in the most classic sense."— Lisa Connell Gay Community News
"There's a lot going on here and Habib skilfully manages to juggle it all, entangling the reader in a gripping narrative, one we can identify more with as each page turns."— Pat Carty Hot Press
"Impossible to put down....Conner Habib has written a debut novel which has the style, elevated prose and assurance of a much more experienced novelist."— Susan McKeever Books Ireland
"Conner Habib’s debut novel is a bleak, dark adrenaline rush."— Clive Barker
"Dripping with menace from the first page, this story of childhood enemies meeting up fifteen years later is utterly enthralling.… [C]ompelling, shocking, and beautiful."— Liz Nugent, author of Lying in Wait
"Tender, horrifying, utterly transfixing."— Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
"A deeply disturbing yet, somehow, soaring novel I won’t soon forget. It plumbs the depths of traumatized characters trapped within our damaging culture. I couldn’t look away, even when I was looking from between my fingers."— Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club
"The opening lines of Hawk Mountain plummet you into an atmosphere of creeping dread and precarious restraint that won’t let up until the final, shocking moments."— Caitlin Doughty, bestselling author of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
"Hawk Mountain is deft horror, made of precise strikes into our most vulnerable psychic terrain… Finally, a horror story that knows cisheteropatriarchy is the villain!"— Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
"Conner Habib writes with [a] hallucinatory precision, and a kind of merciless humanity, about the poisonous work of repression. His forebears—Poe, Highsmith, even classical tragedy—are clear, but his originality is clearer still. Hawk Mountain is a work of strange, glittering darkness."— Mark O’Connell, author of Notes from an Apocalypse
"A brilliantly disturbing, expertly crafted literary noir that will stick with you long after you put it down. Conner Habib has written a flawless meditation on the fruitless, but eternally human, effort to kill off the parts of ourselves we cannot love—literally and metaphorically. I love this book."— Sara Gran, author of The Infinite Blacktop
"A moving and unflinching portrayal of a man caught in a trap of his own making, but willing to do almost anything—to almost anybody—if it will keep him from having to face up to himself. Hawk Mountain is a wonderfully bleak and beautifully written debut."— Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World
"Habib’s unique examination of his flawed and fascinating characters as the victims and sources of violence is both disturbing and insightful. ...With haunting prose and deeply atmospheric descriptions, Hawk Mountain is a disturbing descent into the convulsions of the human mind and heart."— Maya Fleischmann BookPage
"Habib brings rich psychological insight to his characters, expertly observing how the conflicts of youth persist into Todd and Jack’s present. …[T]his dramatic tale soars."— Publishers Weekly
"The tension is palpable on every page, and Habib skillfully illustrates the complexity of relationships and the pain of unmet desires, both queer and otherwise. His prose is as brutal as it is profound and beautiful. …A brutal and gorgeous tale of manipulation, control, and desire."— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This heart-pounding thriller will have readers furiously turning pages…this gorgeous debut affirms [Habib’s] stunning gift for dissecting humanity."— Booklist (starred review)
★ 2022-04-13
The reappearance of a childhood bully throws the life of a New England man into turmoil.
When the book opens, Todd Nasca is spending time on the beach with his 6-year-old son, Anthony. They moved to New Granard four months ago, and soon Todd will start his position as a high school English teacher and Anthony will begin school for the first time. After having kept the boy out of kindergarten, Todd is anxious about his son entering the world; he feels like he's “pushing Anthony off a precipice.” Todd and his wife, Livia, divorced four years ago after a brief and tepid marriage, but Livia is back from her travels in Europe with renewed interest in knowing the son she left behind. Todd is alarmed when a stranger approaches Anthony at the beach—except he turns out to not be a stranger at all. Jack Gates transferred to Todd's high school when both boys were seniors, but they haven’t seen each other in years, and for good reason: Flashbacks detail how Jack viciously bullied Todd, calling him homophobic slurs, threatening him, and alienating Todd from their peers. Underlying the meanness was a tension that has followed both men to the present—a feeling it's possible they've been purposefully avoiding. When Todd presses, Jack is vague about the state of his marriage, how long he plans to stay, or if his sudden reappearance in Todd's life might be more than just coincidence. The longer Jack’s around, the more Todd’s discomfort grows, building to a shocking act of violence that inextricably links the characters and forces Todd down a path of alienation, lies, and madness. The tension is palpable on every page, and Habib skillfully illustrates the complexity of relationships and the pain of unmet desires, both queer and otherwise. His prose is as brutal as it is profound and beautiful: “Is everyone unhappy? Is everyone stuck? I think, Jack, I was happy sometimes; no, I was, I was before you, before you showed up; and you were happy when you got here, and Livia was happy before she met me, and Anthony was happy; and then, what? Everything is fine and then something shows up and you can’t be happy after that; what is that?”
A brutal and gorgeous tale of manipulation, control, and desire.
2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Long-listed
