The Hitch

Some novels announce themselves politely. This one kicks the door open, looks around, and decides reality is optional.

In The Hitch, Sara Levine returns with the same fearless, off-the-rails intelligence that made Treasure Island!!! a cult obsession, only sharper, stranger, and somehow more tender. The premise sounds ridiculous on purpose: a woman believes her nephew is possessed by the spirit of a dead corgi. Then it gets uncomfortable. Then it gets funny again. Then it gets real in a way that sneaks up on the reader.

Rose Cutler is deeply convinced she’s doing life correctly. Antiracist, secular Jewish feminist, eco-conscious, principled to the bone. Babysitting her six-year-old nephew should be manageable. Follow the rules. Respect boundaries. Be rational. But after a dog attack at the park, Nathan starts barking, overeating, and insisting a corgi now lives inside him. Rose tells herself this is imagination, grief, and projection. Reason will fix it. It always should. Except reason keeps failing, and the week keeps ticking down.

Levine leans hard into the absurd and never flinches. She commits fully to the strange logic of the situation, letting it stretch and wobble until it exposes something raw underneath. Loneliness. Control. The quiet panic of loving someone you can’t manage or solve. Rose’s certainty begins to crack, and what spills out is both hilarious and unsettling.

This is comedy with teeth. It skewers modern pieties without cruelty, pokes at moral rigidity without smugness, and treats unconditional love as both noble and exhausting. The jokes land, the scenes escalate, and the emotional payoff arrives sideways, when you’re least prepared.

The Hitch doesn’t ask the reader to believe in possession. It asks them to recognize what happens when the stories we tell ourselves stop working. Only a killjoy would refuse to go along for the ride.