‘The White Hot’ packs an emotional punch in a small package

By Libby D’Orvilliers

Anger is a complicated emotion, to say the least. When it manifests itself and you get caught up in the throes of it, it can feel like an uncontrollable flame with smoke so bright it clouds your vision and judgement. This complex emotion is perfectly captured in all its blazing glory in “The White Hot.”

While you might not recognize her by name, you are likely familiar with some of the works of Pulitzer Prize-winner Quiara Alegría Hudes. A film producer, playwright, perhaps most-known for her crafting of the book for the musical “In The Heights,” Hudes is now a first-time author of a published literary fiction novel,“The White Hot.” The novel was released in hardcover by One World, an imprint of Random House, on Nov. 11 and was met with astounding praise from critics and more casual readers alike.

The novel tells the tale of a young woman named April Soto through a semi-epistolary fashion of a long and detailed letter she writes to her estranged daughter, Noelle. 

Epistolary novels, or novels written through a series of letters, do not get enough love in my opinion. They are a wonderful format that allows readers to become truly intertwined with the narrator and be able to understand intimate thoughts and feelings of their life. 

They also lend themselves useful to conveying the increasingly popular unreliable narrator trope in literature. “The White Hot” is certainly no exception to this concept and I am here for it.

April is messy. Perhaps more messy than the average person, or perhaps she just wears her messiness more visibly than most. Either way, she exists in a society, our society, that tells women they are “too much” and it is so harrowing to see how deeply April is affected by not only messages from those around her, but by generational dialogues she has come to integrate with herself.

It is books like this, my friends, that remind me why I love reading. To be taken into someone else’s world, for just under 200 pages, is true magic.

The narrative prose in this book is an art exhibit in and of itself. Each page is expertly adorned with hyperbolic descriptions and similes. Adjectives abound in a way that does not overwhelm or distract, but rather further engulfs the reader into Soto’s world.

In an interview with the author transcribed in the back few pages of the book, Hudes describes her novel in a few short words: “slim and intense.” There is absolutely no way I could sum this book up more accurately.

I would love to get into the nitty-gritty of the ins and outs of the uniquely crafted plot, but in doing so, I would spoil the experience of reading the novel for the first time. Additionally, to spare you from the overview you can get from glimpsing over the book’s dust jacket, I want to take the rest of my space on this page to share with you more subtle nuances that will hopefully spark your interest enough to pick up the book for yourself.

As I briefly hinted at a moment ago, generational trauma, that seems to manifest itself as generational anger or “white hotness” within the Soto family women, is a key theme of this aptly titled book. Soto grapples with her own “white hotness” in such unique ways that at times, it almost caused me to pass judgement on her. However, I think that initial gut reaction sparked in me is intentional on Hudes’ part and, in the end, caused me to feel even more connected to Soto and resonate with her story.

Additionally, as Kirkus Reviews notes in their commentary on the book, this short story epitomizes that “sometimes loving looks like leaving.” As you can gather from the back of the novel, Soto can be classified as “a runaway mother,” but by the ending of the novel, you have a soft spot for Soto and come to understand both her and her daughter’s points of view. And yes, it does appear that sometimes, loving looks like leaving.

I was fully engrossed. I read the book in two sittings, not even sparing a second of my time to pull my eyes away from the pages so much so as to check why my phone was buzzing which is a truly novel concept in this day and age. In the two hours or so I spent reading “The White Hot” nothing seemed nearly as important as seeing how Soto’s story concluded. The mountains of homework could wait.

And what a freeing thing it is, to read. To allow myself those few hours of my life to be so swept away by the images being conjured up in my head that, for once in the prior 72 hours, I was not planning out how or when I will manage to check everything off of my seemingly infinite to-do list. 

All of this to say, do not discredit reading as something that is “a waste of time” in your busy schedule. I did that for a bit and, quite frankly, I was neglecting one of my primary forms of self care.

Everything I had anticipated this book to be prior to picking it up was thrown to the wind. All except one thing; that it would be astounding.

I am no professional literary critic, but mark my words when I tell you that this book will be an award winner come the new year. I reserve the right to say that I told you so.

This book earns an obvious five out of five stars from me.

Thank you One World for providing a copy of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Libby D’Orvilliers is a senior psychology major