{"id":173832,"date":"2026-05-27T11:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T15:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=173832"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:52:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:52:54","slug":"harriet-clark-on-the-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

A gifted fiction writer who doesn\u2019t publish must stand accused of genius or maladjustment (if we can distinguish those)\u2014and Harriet Clark endured both during the twenty-plus years she spent refining her debut,<\/em> The Hill. The work in progress, from which the<\/em> Review eventually extracted\u00a0a Plimpton Prize\u2013winning short story<\/a> in 2022, earned her several MacDowell residencies, fellowships from the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop and Stanford University\u2019s Wallace Stegner program, and a rare pitch of whispered literary envy and suspicion\u2014amply justified, in the end, by the novel itself, which came out earlier this month. Clark described its slow, uncertain gestation over tea one Friday afternoon in May, in the sun-soaked attic study of the Bed-Stuy house she shares with her wife and son. Its striking premise draws on her early experience. During her infancy, her mother, Judith, a member of the Weather Underground and other radical organizations, was arrested, and later sentenced to life in prison for driving the getaway vehicle for an armed robbery, intended to fund revolutionary struggle, that went disastrously awry. (She was released on parole after nearly forty years in 2019.) Like her protagonist, Suzanna, Clark (whose father also spent years incarcerated in connection with his involvement in militant groups) was raised by her maternal grandparents, once prominent Communists; they apparently fostered and protected Clark\u2019s intimacy with her mother against the best efforts of the state. Yet rather than some thinly veiled autobiography, the book is an eerie, dreamlike, funny, psychologically acute fable crossed with a nineteenth-century novel (unexpressed ardor, letters burned unread, train rides, consequences), a portrait of childhood to rival <\/em>What Maisie Knew.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

This book took you a very long time. What was going on there?<\/p>\n

HARRIET CLARK<\/p>\n

A big part of the problem was that, obviously, I had a situation, but I did not have a story. And I had a character whose perspective I often wrote through, but I didn\u2019t think she was a protagonist. She didn\u2019t really do anything. She was just inside that situation. So how could there be a novel about her?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

It was hard for you to imagine her driving the action, having any agency.<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

Exactly. It used to sadden me that there were so few novels about growing up with a parent inside. When you don\u2019t see your life represented, it contributes to the sense that you\u2019re living a degraded life, not worthy of art. And when you\u2019re in these unlucky situations, people do sometimes act like you\u2019re living a lesser version of a life, like if your mother is in prison, you have less of a mother. So part of what became important to me, once I began imagining it as a book for readers and not just a private writing experience, was to show that life as something dignified. There\u2019s a real American obsession with freedom that shapes classic storylines. For a while I believed the book had to end with the girl finally leaving her mother and riding off into her own life. But that doesn\u2019t take into account how, if you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing. Certain forms of freedom are also forms of being unheld. Even though there\u2019s no way for Suzanna to have the standard sense of progress, of moving toward the future, and even though no one else thinks she is doing anything heroic, she needed to have, from the beginning, the revelation it took me so long to have\u2014that, in trying to be with her family, she was<\/em> doing something meaningful.<\/p>\n

Also, and this is a sloppy analogy, but if you work on a book for twenty years\u2014whatever we mean by work<\/em>\u2014people really act like you\u2019re very neurotic. Like there\u2019s something wrong with you, or you\u2019re doing something wrong\u2014and it\u2019s easy to internalize that. Mary Ruefle says that she used to think she kept writing because she hadn\u2019t yet said what she wanted to say, \u201cbut I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.\u201d For some of us, it takes so long to hear what you\u2019ve been listening to\u2014and it\u2019s meaningful to give yourself all the time you need.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What do<\/em> we mean by work? Were you writing some version of the same book all those years?<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

Well, for the vast majority of the time, I had no aspiration for it to be a book. I wanted to be in writing programs because I like reading and being around writers, and because I was trying to sidestep the regular economy, the obligation to build a certain kind of life. As I say in my acknowledgments, it was a cover story for wanting time to myself. For years, I only wrote for deadlines, either for workshop or to apply for some grant or fellowship. And in that time, you know, I\u2019d read some amazing panoramic novel from all these different perspectives, and then I\u2019d spend three years imagining a book that had the perspectives of the nuns and the guards, and so on. I would do all that writing, and then three years later I\u2019d throw it all away.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What made you feel you had to trash so much?<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

The first book I read that got me to throw out a whole collection of stuff I\u2019d been working on was E. L. Doctorow\u2019s The Book of Daniel<\/em>. It\u2019s a fictionalized story of the Rosenbergs, who were accused of being spies and executed. That family was very meaningful to my family, and as I was reading the book I felt conflicted, because his prose is so playful. He\u2019ll be doing a three-page-long sentence moving between first and third person, and he\u2019s so funny. It has this incredible mania. One part of me was enjoying that so much, and another felt, \u201cAre you allowed to take this actual tragedy and make it about your prose?\u201d And then, very far into the book, he has this scene of the children coming to the death house to say goodbye to their parents before they\u2019re executed. It is wrenching, written in an entirely different style. You realize that everything he\u2019s been doing has been making you complicit in mis-seeing what a tragedy it is that the American government is about to murder these two kids\u2019 parents. Doctorow always knew he was eventually trying to bring the reader to the point of being able to look the tragedy in the face. When I finished reading that, I knew that everything I\u2019d been writing in the preceding years, trying to play around with the material and the language and the different perspectives, had been an act of evasion.<\/p>\n

But then I spent the next three years writing the worst Sebaldian version of this book\u2014my God, just terrible Sebald karaoke. If you could set computer files on fire, I would have.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

When did you start to take it more seriously as a novel?<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

Most of what\u2019s there was written in my forties\u2014there\u2019s really only one scene that existed twenty years before, which is in a slightly different style. It was around 2017 that I began to really think for the first time about publishing. Trump began his family separation policy at the border, and I saw how outraged people were to see kids being taken out of their parents\u2019 arms. And I shared that outrage, but it also registered to me that many people didn\u2019t quite understand that that\u2019s exactly what happens every day at the end of visiting hours in jails and prisons all over this country\u2014that all detention is family separation, and that we were already doing this on a massive scale. You had five million children in the U.S. who\u2019d had a parent in prison at some point in their upbringing\u2014one in fourteen American children, one in four Black children. If you\u2019re inside that community, you know how ubiquitous it is. If your parent is in prison, you can never think it\u2019s just happening to you, because you never see your parent without seeing other kids visiting theirs. So I began to think about whether there was something I wanted to say in a more public way.<\/p>\n

And then right around that time there were the caravans of migrants coming up from Central America, which were being vilified in some corners of the press and portrayed as tragic in others. When I would see the footage, night after night, of parents carrying their children hundreds of miles in their arms and on their backs\u2014I can barely carry my son the five blocks from school!\u2014I was moved by how heroic it was, these people making such efforts to keep their families together. All those years I\u2019d been saying that my narrator didn\u2019t do anything, but actually, I love Joseph Campbell, and I could start to see how to write the story as a hero\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What strikes me, hearing about this political, real-world impulse animating the novel, is how restrained you are in representing the prison itself. It\u2019s not the darkest portrait.<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

The places that shape us in our youth, especially when we\u2019re looking back on them later, are mythic places. We don\u2019t experience them in the style of realism. The idea that your mother is shut away on a hill she can never leave produces a mythic atmosphere that determines how you would describe it.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

It makes it feel almost like a thought experiment\u2014imagine if we did this, locked people away for life, what would that mean? There\u2019s this quite moving sense, too, of the mother shielding the child from her experience, until much later when she starts to say, Perhaps I should have let you know more that it\u2019s not so nice in here.<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

Yes, which is also me talking to the reader\u2014it\u2019s true that the mother would protect the child from this, and I have been protecting you, and now we\u2019re going to get into it. There are a thousand reasons why I would never write nonfiction, and one is that nonfiction can have this ethical mandate that says, You must care about this because it\u2019s really happening to real people.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

And let me show you in excruciating detail just how horrific it is \u2026<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

Exactly. I\u2019m a very emotionally defended, shut-down person, and I have done most of my feeling through novels. Because they have no mandates. You don\u2019t have to care about the characters in novels. You owe them nothing. The great gift of fiction is that you\u2019re released from the burden of obligation. Those are the conditions that allow me to think in a different way, and to feel a lot more.<\/p>\n

We have certain cultural scripts around prison that are triggered by set images and tones. Some of that is meant to provoke horror or pity. Appropriate responses, but I don\u2019t like being coerced, and I didn\u2019t want to write a book that felt coercive. One of the primary ways prisons legitimate themselves is by becoming familiar to us, becoming ordinary. When, actually, it is an extraordinary thing to do to people, to take away their basic rights, to gather them up in a place and trap them there forever. And an extraordinary reality to impose on children. I wanted to remove everything we were used to about prisons, so that when the gate closes and Suzanna\u2019s mother is gone, stuck on the top of the hill, we can be almost re-awed by what family separation is\u2014for me, it is the original and ongoing sin of our nation. We\u2019ve done that since the residential schools for the indigenous, through the horrors of slavery, and now with escalating deportations\u2014it\u2019s remarkable that the state is allowed to continue this assault on families. I didn\u2019t want to call upon any of those familiar images and tones, anything that would bring the usual emotional baggage. I wanted a new terrain in which the reader could be free to discover what they felt.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, the one time that shackles appear in the book, I knew I wanted to have a strange, unexpected animal there too. It\u2019s also my homage to a very weird Bruno Schulz story I love called \u201cFather\u2019s Last Escape,\u201d where he imagines that his father has become a scorpion. By that point, I wanted just a little more of the horrors to be coming through, and I still needed to keep space for emotions I hadn\u2019t overly determined, so I put a parrot in there. Reader, feel whatever you\u2019d like to feel about this parrot.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Like a dream.<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

Yes, because in dreams, you\u2019re in the presence of meaning, but you can\u2019t reduce it. I don\u2019t really believe you can interpret it. I didn\u2019t want to have digested everything for the reader. That\u2019s why I had to write it sideways, at the corner of my eye. The book is a dream for me. I want you to feel inside the murk of the unconscious, where the mind has certain images it keeps returning to, but it doesn\u2019t quite know what they mean.<\/p>\n

I forget who describes the process of writing a poem as stumbling upon some amazing fruit and then having to build the tree that would drop that fruit. It\u2019s very fragile, trying to figure out how not to let the conscious mind in too much. I had to do that by reading, because the only time I can really allow my unconscious to enter is in my reading life. I\u2019m always reading and I have my notebook. Someone would use a word or conjure a tone, or I\u2019d reread this poem by David Ferry, \u201cResemblance,\u201d where he thinks he sees his dead father in a diner, and it has so many lines that resonate with me, like, \u201cUnable to know is a condition I\u2019ve lived in \/ All my life\u201d\u2014and then I would write something.<\/p>\n

It helped to have scenes that felt kind of one-off\u2014meaningful but somewhat absurd and liberated from having to be plot points. I did not want the book to have the heaviness of my obligation to plot.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The sense of time and movement in the book do feel unusual. There\u2019s an intensity and stasis, and then these other forms of momentum emerge.<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

That was the technical challenge, how to honor that she\u2019s inside an experience where she has been denied certain forms of change when, fundamentally, a book must have movement for the reader to enjoy it. Obviously, from early on, my own life involved a lot of repetition, a pretty nonprogressive, suspended experience of time without any real notion of release on the horizon. What Suzanna is doing is ritualizing her life. Every week she performs these steps where she climbs a hill, she empties her pockets, she walks down this aisle, and she\u2019s returned to her mother. That\u2019s sacrament. That is the repetition of action that allows meaning to emerge. It doesn\u2019t require change, and it doesn\u2019t require futurity. That interests me and moves me. How do you say that this moment in time is meaningful without needing to have that meaning proven by some trajectory of improvement or redemption?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You had your child during the period you were writing this, too, and I wondered if that informed that sense that ordinary time and repetition could itself be redemptive. I\u2019ve felt that, after having a child, caring for them, seeing them change every day, the passage of time is not traumatic in the same way. Do you feel that?<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

No, not really. I mean, having a child makes one hungrier for that sensation of time that\u2019s off the clock\u2014it becomes all the more vital to read something you have no reason to read, to assert that time is for you, not just something you\u2019re dutifully distributing to everyone else.<\/p>\n

Having a young child has made me understand more than I ever did how vulnerable young children are, and that has profoundly changed my sense of the world. When I hear about children being starved, or bombed, I am one hundred percent carrying inside me the fact that my son becomes an asshole if he has dinner half an hour late. I\u2019m thinking, How are these mothers putting their kids to sleep in war zones? But I almost couldn\u2019t bear to bring that awareness of my child\u2019s vulnerability into my actual writing.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

That\u2019s interesting, because in reading the book I had such a keen sense of the pain of the mother in prison, deprived of the child, and of the child having this enforced, precocious knowledge of that pain\u2014these games where Suzanna allows the mother to play at mothering her, where she pretends to be asleep and the mother gets to wake her, as she would if they could live together.<\/p>\n

CLARK<\/p>\n

It was important that the book capture a particular atmosphere of childhood, what it feels like to be both constantly watched and ignored, and the combination of vigilance and dissociation that many children have. They\u2019re at the mercy of an adult world they cannot understand, so they have to simultaneously pay close attention to the environment and shut themselves off from it. So much of childhood is the experience of being in a room with people talking around you. There\u2019s all this speech that you\u2019re estranged from\u2014it\u2019s not directed at you, you can\u2019t exactly follow it\u2014but that is formative and is probably shaping the whole of the rest of your life. A child\u2019s fundamental vulnerability is their permeability, the fact that they haven\u2019t emotionally individuated yet, so the emotions that belong to other people are entering their bodies. I wanted to capture the tone of what that feels like\u2014but it didn\u2019t come in any way from observing my son. It came from reading the books that changed my life in the way they captured that tone\u2014Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Housekeeping<\/em>, Kazuo Ishiguro\u2019s Never Let Me Go<\/em>. I got far more guidance from identifying with those British clones than with my own son!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be honest\u2014my feeling is that, if the book is a memoir, it\u2019s a memoir of the books I love. Absolutely everything in it is a tribute to those books. It opens with a cat attack, as a tribute to Paula Fox\u2019s Desperate Characters<\/em>, and ends with Suzanna on the bench, as my nod to Ishiguro\u2019s The Remains of the Day<\/em>. Then the dialogue\u2014almost everything about the way the grandmother and her friends talk comes from Grace Paley and Leonard Michaels, all those writers who captured a much wittier and more Yiddish-inflected version of that generation of politically committed Jewish women than was my reality.<\/p>\n

There were so many things inside me that I never knew I felt until I read those books, or until those books read me. I spent a very long time reading about radicals in the thirties, forties and fifties, the sixties and seventies, but then, to all of a sudden have that profound experience of that\u2019s me<\/em>, inside books that describe totally different conditions\u2014it frees you from thinking that your own history, your identity, constricts you. Those writers brought me into the human fold. They revealed me to myself. They made this call, and then it took twenty years for me to write my response.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lidija Haas, formerly the <\/em>Review\u2019s deputy editor, is a writer and a candidate in psychoanalytic training.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Harriet Clark is the winner of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review\u2019s 2023 George Plimpton Prize for her short story \u201cDescent,\u201d and has received fellowships from the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop and the Wallace Stegner Program. <\/em>The Hill is her debut novel.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68486],"tags":[25253,7777,12243,67827,3461,68861,19436,241,648,10759,21649,27281,34301,10366,9683,1527,8902,3572,68862,68863],"class_list":["post-173832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversations","tag-bruno-schulz","tag-david-ferry","tag-e-l-doctorow","tag-featured","tag-grace-paley","tag-harriet-clark","tag-incarceration","tag-interview","tag-iowa-writers-workshop","tag-kazuo-ishiguro","tag-leonard-michaels","tag-macdowell-colony","tag-marilynn-robinson","tag-mary-ruefle","tag-paula-fox","tag-plimpton-prize","tag-prison","tag-stegner-fellow","tag-the-hill","tag-weather-underground"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill by Lidija Haas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 27, 2026 \u2013 \u201cIf you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill by Lidija Haas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 27, 2026 \u2013 \u201cIf you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-27T15:57:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-06-30T20:52:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1838\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1284\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lidija Haas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lidija Haas\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"15 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lidija Haas\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9cde54ae8a8cd7055b7ce365245cca86\"},\"headline\":\"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-27T15:57:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-06-30T20:52:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/\"},\"wordCount\":3417,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712-1024x715.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Bruno Schulz\",\"David Ferry\",\"E.L. Doctorow\",\"Featured\",\"Grace Paley\",\"Harriet Clark\",\"incarceration\",\"interview\",\"Iowa Writer's Workshop\",\"Kazuo Ishiguro\",\"Leonard Michaels\",\"MacDowell Colony\",\"Marilynn Robinson\",\"Mary Ruefle\",\"Paula Fox\",\"Plimpton Prize\",\"prison\",\"Stegner Fellow\",\"The Hill\",\"Weather Underground\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Conversations\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/\",\"name\":\"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill by Lidija Haas\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712-1024x715.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-27T15:57:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-06-30T20:52:54+00:00\",\"description\":\"May 27, 2026 \u2013 \u201cIf you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing.\u201d\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712.png\",\"width\":1838,\"height\":1284},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9cde54ae8a8cd7055b7ce365245cca86\",\"name\":\"Lidija Haas\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e8c723b15eeb129f4b0af59abf5a74c75a5583dcf20dc78841c56ccfc93d3dd0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e8c723b15eeb129f4b0af59abf5a74c75a5583dcf20dc78841c56ccfc93d3dd0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Lidija Haas\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lhaas\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill by Lidija Haas","description":"May 27, 2026 \u2013 \u201cIf you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill by Lidija Haas","og_description":"May 27, 2026 \u2013 \u201cIf you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2026-05-27T15:57:08+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-06-30T20:52:54+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1838,"height":1284,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Lidija Haas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lidija Haas","Est. reading time":"15 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/"},"author":{"name":"Lidija Haas","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9cde54ae8a8cd7055b7ce365245cca86"},"headline":"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill","datePublished":"2026-05-27T15:57:08+00:00","dateModified":"2026-06-30T20:52:54+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/"},"wordCount":3417,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712-1024x715.png","keywords":["Bruno Schulz","David Ferry","E.L. Doctorow","Featured","Grace Paley","Harriet Clark","incarceration","interview","Iowa Writer's Workshop","Kazuo Ishiguro","Leonard Michaels","MacDowell Colony","Marilynn Robinson","Mary Ruefle","Paula Fox","Plimpton Prize","prison","Stegner Fellow","The Hill","Weather Underground"],"articleSection":["Conversations"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/","name":"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill by Lidija Haas","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712-1024x715.png","datePublished":"2026-05-27T15:57:08+00:00","dateModified":"2026-06-30T20:52:54+00:00","description":"May 27, 2026 \u2013 \u201cIf you\u2019re deprived of a home, deprived of access to your family, you learn that, actually, being bound to others is the significant thing.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-26-at-120712.png","width":1838,"height":1284},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/harriet-clark-on-the-hill\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Twenty-Year Novel: Harriet Clark on The Hill"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9cde54ae8a8cd7055b7ce365245cca86","name":"Lidija Haas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e8c723b15eeb129f4b0af59abf5a74c75a5583dcf20dc78841c56ccfc93d3dd0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e8c723b15eeb129f4b0af59abf5a74c75a5583dcf20dc78841c56ccfc93d3dd0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Lidija Haas"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lhaas\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173832"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174363,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173832\/revisions\/174363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}