Artfuse: Penetrating glimpses into the depths

“Hughes’s deep dive into its characters is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s close study of her Bloomsbury denizens, or J.D. Salinger’s psychological probings of the Glass family. Regarding her resources of art and craft, Hughes is just as masterful. … Hughes doles out details deftly; nothing is incidental. … The Beach House is a collection so varied in its telling, rich in its details and character-divining that it demands to be re-read…Her penetrating glimpses into the depths of these lives make us more deeply aware of our own.”
— The Arts Fuse

David Daniel, “Book Review: ‘The Ocean House’— Infiltrating the Beachheads of Memory,” The Arts Fuse, January 7, 2021.

https://artsfuse.org/216908/book-review-the-ocean-house-infiltrating-the-beachheads-of-memory/

New York Times: A rich, novelistic sweep

“Hughes’s collection of linked stories, following various characters through a tragic vacation on the Jersey Shore and in the years thereafter, accrues a rich, novelistic sweep and leaves readers with a vertiginous sense of contingency.”
— New York Times

Kathleen Massara, New & Noteworthy, From Russian Satire to the Comet Apocalypse, New York Times, January 5, 2021.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/books/review/new-this-week.html

Kirkus: Beautiful portraits of fractured lives

“A Rube Goldberg-like collection of stories in which a single character from one tale trips a connection to another… A fascinating puzzle… Rich with detail and unexpected phrasing, Hughes’ prose illuminates her dark emotional terrain. Grief-stricken yet beautiful portraits of fractured lives.”
— Kirkus (starred review)

“Review: The Ocean House,” starred review, Kirkus, Oct. 14, 2020.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mary-beth-hughes/the-ocean-house/

Publishers Weekly: Arresting

“Arresting… With an enviable ear for dialogue and high command of prose, Hughes finds in these overlapping stories a stark beauty amid scenes of suffering and death.[She] is a careful reader of her characters, and captures their small, easy-to-miss moments of humanity through life’s vicissitudes. These stories pack a punch.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Fiction Book Review: The Ocean House by Mary-Beth Hughes,” Publishers Weekly, September 30, 2020.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8021-5753-9

The Atlantic: How Writing Achieves Grace

“I feel I was very lucky to be a dancer first. I learned not to be results-oriented…. I learned over years and years that the most gorgeous things pop up unannounced, and the whole project is to be there when it happens.”
— Mary-Beth Hughes

Joe Fassler, By Heart: How Writing Achieves Grace, interview with Mary-Beth Hughes
The Atlantic, July 28, 2015