A book hasn’t made as much of an impact on me as this in such a long time. I mean it with my whole heart and soul when I say Charlotte Lobb’s Hannah and Huia is something words cannot describe. It is a story of such deep emotional investment and love, such endless love that it maims and paralyzes and makes one a shell of who they once were. It crushes you, it makes you want to go back and pick a different read for your Tuesday evening enjoyment, but you cannot help but continue turning the pages, yearning for each character’s emotional catharsis.

Hannah and Huia is a novel about two women and their unspeakable experiences which led them to be in a mental health unit. It is a story that explores mental health, death, loss, suicide, and tragedy with a gentle yet purposeful intention. It is also a story about recovery, human connection, family, community and, above all else, love. Told through their two perspectives, their lives and their haunting pasts are explored, showing how these women from two different walks of life share intrinsic similarities and how at the heart of it all is a mother’s instinct and attachment to their child.

The prose is easy to follow, easy to picture, and easy to empathise with. Hannah’s voice feels so authentic and vivid. Her internal monologues and external dialogue are parts of herself voiced in all their raw emotion and detail and make for some incredible chapters. Her inability to speak at the beginning, her hesitations later on, and her instinctual drive to communicate with Huia make her a character you can’t help but understand. You read what’s going on and you feel this deep sense of understanding and empathy for her. I’m glad most of the book is in Hannah’s perspective because her emotional turmoil is a strong hook that you need answers to, making reading this in mere hours all the more possible.

Huia, bless her heart, is such a sweet and pitiful character. I don’t want to believe what happened to her could have ever been condoned, but I know enough about history to know it is too true to argue against. For it to be part of New Zealand’s history makes me all the more angry and appalled at how societal norms and pressures can ostracise and dehumanise those who need help. This goes for mental health as well as the sad history of unwed mothers forced to give up their children under duress, both strong themes in this novel. While the latter is a heavy topic to address and confront, Hannah and Huia does a magnificent job at introducing the reader to this part of history and showcases the lasting impacts such trauma can have on a mother.

Hannah and Huia is an incredible novel. Readers of New Zealand Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, and stories where women and mothers are prominent characters and their experiences are the centre of such novels should immediately add this to their TBR lists. Hannah and Huia deserves so much love and recognition, as does Charlotte Lobb for creating such a moving piece of literature. Not only has she managed to write a compelling book about mental health, but she has done so with such care and grace that it is more than just a book – it is a piece of pure art in all its joy and misery.