2.5
Four by Four
ByPublisher Description
A haunting depiction of a sinister elite boarding school in a world veering toward chaos.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesFour by Four Reviews
2.5
“A book in two distinct halves (plus an epilogue): the first part a dual-POV narrative focused on children attending a boarding school which prides itself on being a safe haven in a dangerous world; the second part a diary of a substitute teacher at the school. I enjoyed the atmosphere and gradual realisation of something not being quite right, but in the end I was left with more questions than answers when I'd expected some more clarity from the build-up.”
“Sorry to say that Four by Four by Sara Mesa did not work for me at all. I actually ended up skimming the last 1/3 because I was so bored by it. The style was distant and impersonal, desperately trying to create a sense of weirdness and mystery that never landed. So many loose ends are never tied up and there were plot elements that seemed included just for the shock factor without really tying in to any rhyme or reason. The characters, even in their strangeness, were also uninteresting. I struggle to think of anything good to say about this book, sadly. 😭 My first flop for 2026!”
About Sara Mesa
Sara Mesa is the author of eight works of fiction, including Scar (winner of the Ojo Critico Prize), Four by Four (a finalist for the Herralde Prize), An Invisible Fire (winner of the Premio Málaga de Novela), and Cara de Pan. Her works have been translated into more than ten different languages, and has been widely praised for her concise, sharp writing style.
Katie Whittemore
Katie Whittemore is graduate of the University of NH (BA), Cambridge University (M.Phil), and Middlebury College (MA), and was a 2018 Bread Loaf Translators Conference participant. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Two Lines, The Arkansas International, The Common Online, and Gulf Coast Magazine Online, The Los Angeles Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and InTranslation. Current projects include novels by Spanish authors Sara Mesa, Javier Serena, and Aliocha Coll, Aroa Moreno Durán, and Nuria Labari.
Other books by Katie Whittemore
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