Hell is a 1998 novel by Kathryn Davis. It was her third novel.
Contents
Major themes
The novel cross-cuts exploring two different households over three centuries. The story explores how conflict and pain at once hold the families together while pulling them apart.
Publication history
Published in 1998 by Ecco Press (imprint of HarperCollins), in 2003 it was reprinted by Hachette Book Group imprint Back Bay Books.
In an interview with Bookslut, Kathryn Davis talked about the struggle to get Hell published: "It came out in '98, I think. But I had finished it, and it took awhile first to find the publisher, because the editor who had published the previous novel (The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf), when he read Hell, it just knocked him for a loop. In a bad way. He sort of didn't want to have anything to do with it. Then my agent kind of threw up her hands, because I think she had been hoping he would take it. She didn't really shop it around as much as in retrospect I think she might have because she just thought if Gary wasn't going to publish it, probably nobody would. She actually said that to me. Then she sent it to one of the other smaller presses, and finally Ecco bought it. That was good, but it took a while. It had been finished several years before it finally saw print."
