Sophie Lefens’s Her Kind is a beautiful, meditative novel about motherhood, friendship, grief, and the strange ways we prepare ourselves for loss. It is set on an almost dreamlike lakeside farm where a group of women create a temporary refuge from the rest of the world. This quietly immersive debut feels less like a story to race through than one to settle into, allowing its atmosphere and its questions about love and mortality to seep gradually into the reader’s thoughts. As someone who is frequently impatient with slow-moving novels, I found the writing here perfectly suited to the pace. The story moves slowly, but it never felt like it was dragging. Instead, the meditative quality of Lefens’s prose made me want to linger in this beautiful, strange world she created.
When Ada is left alone to raise her young son, Lenny, she retreats with him to her Aunt Leigh’s crumbling lakeside home. It is an extraordinary place to raise a child: surrounded by water, wildflowers, animals, and the rhythms of the natural world, with none of the constant negativity of Lenny’s father intruding on their lives. Ada has also managed to find part-time work that she enjoys and that allows her to spend a great deal of time with her son. There is an undeniable element of privilege in the life she has been able to build, particularly because so much of it depends on having an aunt like Leigh who can simply say, in effect, come live with me when everything falls apart. Not everyone has that kind of safety net.
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