Sophia's new play is being performed, and her father, a novelist, is in the audience for the first time. The play is set in the house where he and Sophia once stayed in Sicily, and as he watches the opening scenes, "Sophia's father leans forward. It's not what he thought." With those terse words, Jo Hamya (Three Rooms) underlines the tension of The Hypocrite, which threads between the unsettling theater performance and the years-earlier vacation, needling under the skin of this fraught and faltering father-daughter relationship.
Jo Hamya writes beautiful sentences, with The Hypocrite showing off such impeccable descriptions as, "on a small white boat that rocked like a bell towards a catalogue of blistered cliff faces." The Hypocrite also asks excellent questions about race and class ("Why wouldn't you believe in the possibility of a non-white Hampstead sex romp via Italian sands?") and considers the culture of rabid opinions fueled by the U.S.-mediated Internet ("All your examples are American... because all your opinions are rephrased junk from strangers who pour their heart out via globalised American media conglomerates on the internet.") These gems illuminate the plot, which moves between the present and the past with ease, highlighting the many family difficulties.
Besides the relationships between Sophia and her parents (the seemingly endless lunch with Sophia's increasingly drunk mother is almost as searing as the play), The Hypocrite offers much to think about regarding being a writer, creating worlds from memory and imagination, and how that affects all parties potentially involved. And through flashes of Sophia as a younger woman (whole chapters rendered as parenthetical asides), it becomes clear that the vacation depicted in the play left more marks than are shown on stage, especially regarding how Sophia viewed herself and her agency: "Sophia committed herself to being unseen. She let Anto place his hands on her shoulders and steer her where he wanted."
At its heart, though, this is a novel about familiar and familial pain, the hurts those closest can inflict, even when the harm is unintended or goes completely unnoticed. And it packs a punch, despite its small size. Hamya certainly calls into question the version of masculinity performed by Sophia's father, but she doesn't completely negate him, rendering his embarrassment and confusion beautifully. Similarly, she reveals Sophia's anguish even as she doesn't quite excuse her, leaving readers to wonder exactly which hypocrite is named in the title. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian
Shelf Talker: Jo Hamya's The Hypocrite is an impeccable rendering of familiar and familial pain, the hurts those closest can inflict, even when the harm is unintended or goes completely unnoticed.