How did word of The Hearing Trumpet first come to me? I do not know; I cannot recall from whence it was first raised to my ear — and how fitting for a fever dream such as this. I couldn’t escape the feeling of vague familiarity, as though the book’s contents aligned with a half-remembrance of a childhood fable I was then too young to understand. Throughout the book I was struck by the sense that surely I had heard Marian Leatherby’s tale before, walked the Institute’s grounds myself, perhaps even touched the titular hearing trumpet once upon a time.

But no, this was in fact my first foray into the world of the Winking Abbess. And what a foray it was.

If none of what I just wrote makes any sort of tangible sense, wonderful. Let it stay that way. Don’t even read the synopsis if you haven’t already: this is a book best traversed without a map. The Hearing Trumpet is surrealistic through and through, and if a surreal commentary on feminism and the Goddess mixed with a healthy serving of criticism of religion appeals to you, I recommend this eagerly. It is a whimsical occultist masterpiece.

I absolutely loved this book, and I suspect the author knew Something about the universe. I feel thankful to have partaken.

Also, if the edition you’re reading contains the afterword by Olga Tokarczuk, don’t skip it! It was incredible in its own right.

just a bunch of people manipulating each other and calling it revolution. it's cutting, absurd, purposely overwritten, and for me, a little boring. i didn't really care for the social commentary. very intentionally white feminist with a narrow focus on class, the politics felt performative and emotionally shallow. the performativity is obviously intentional, a cutting commentary on political groups that masquerade chaotic interpersonal conflict as radicalism without interrogating structural harm. it fell flat for me, mostly because the writing felt too on-the-nose to leave anything up to the imagination. but the toxic yuri was fun?

the communal experience of reading this book via the forum made it actually enjoyable. if it weren't for the readalong & the forum, i would have DNF'd expeditiously. since i'm probably one of the last people to read When We Lost Our Heads for the Spring 2026 Readalong, i want to celebrate a little time capsule of my favorite posts because the forum made it bearable. i did not enjoy this book, but i loved us reading this book together. so hold my hand and skip along with me while we revisit the bangers of the 2026 Spring Readalong - When We Lost Our Heads edition 🌸🌼🌻 (beware of spoilers!)

15% (dragonfriend) / 18% (Fantasy) / 19% (minsuni) / 21% (broenyn) / 22% (exploringthestacks) / 31% (darlingdearestdead) / 39% (Wombworm) / 40% (those_who_wander) / 42% (munitum) / 47% (linnie) / 51% (helli) / 53% (ranaofvoles) / 60% (Titania) / 61% (liareads) / 67% (CatherineJ) / 75% (Pageturner11) / 77% (bigbootylez) / 82% (emilyspages) / 82% (notbillnye) / 88% (sofiebug) / 99% (minsuni)

and of course, the cherry on top: the delicious, scrumptious review that perfectly sums up When We Lost Our Heads, by our mother, lucyPagebound

seeing everyone's thoughts and updates about this very polarizing book over the past 3 months brought me so much joy and made me laugh out loud. the lovely discussions in the forum encouraged me to think deeper about the strange choices the author made. the community genuinely made what would have been a mediocre reading experience better.

happy 2026 Spring Readalong, here's to many more!!

This book fell pretty flat for me. It is a book that is purported to center around a tragic death, but I felt like there was a real lack of grief and emotionality and reflection on the character who died, and much more of a focus on a. making decisions “for the good of” someone without their consent and keeping those decisions a secret from them, and b. trying to arrange for a character’s parents to be able to emigrate from Germany to the US due to the Nazi occupation. It isn’t that the circumstances of those characters aren’t ones that would be important, it just seemed like the main reason everyone was there was superceded by these other concerns, and grief did not seep in as much as I would have expected. There also was not much in the way of plot, but because the vibes were also not there, it was a bit of a dull read.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. It was enjoyable on a character level and I really appreciated the complex picture of grief. So often, we get one picture of grief which is either palatable or unpalatable, but we got both in this book, which made it feel realistic. The plot was very meandering in the way that this genre tends to be (positive for some readers and negative for others but neutral for me) and I enjoyed getting to delve into the psyches of the various characters. I enjoyed the way that Florence haunts the narrative in all of the little ways that she does.

However, the ending was not my favorite. There were several loose ends that could have been tied up but definitively were not. That was certainly intentional, but it left me wondering what the point was, after all. Additionally, the whole concept of keeping a tragic secret from a woman because her pregnancy is more important than anything else rubbed me the wrong way. She is more valuable as a pregnant person than as a person and I did not feel that the narrative sufficiently dealt with that. The story is primarily about keeping the secret and did not deal with the consequences thereof, which made the story feel incomplete and with the additional context of what is, in my opinion, the misogyny that made the secret necessary to keep, I simply wasn't impressed.

This book had a lot going for it and around the halfway mark I was hopeful that this would be a new favorite in the quiet literature genre, but the incompletion and insufficient handling of consequences and misogyny meant that this did not reach the heights I hoped for. Shoutout to Anna and Stuart, though, they were the greatest bright spot in this narrative for me.