MixedThe New York Times Book Review...Caleb Crain brings [Prague] vividly to life with his gently meandering debut novel ... Crain wonderfully evokes the novel’s setting in a few deft strokes. He’s a master of the thumbnail character sketch, populating his novel with memorable supporting characters ... he captures the slow pace of life of his innocents abroad, whose biggest adventure is choosing a bar for a drink ... The book’s success in recreating the languid rhythms of its characters’ social lives is also its biggest stumbling block ... Affairs begin, break off and begin again with new partners. Yet for all this activity, the characters don’t seem to learn much or change in any significant way. The book is rich in anecdote but impoverished in its overall purpose — or what is known in less literary circles as plot. A series of charming vignettes might have worked better in a shorter book, but the aimlessness becomes wearying over nearly 500 pages. More crucially, as a main character, Jacob isn’t quite dynamic enough to hold the reader’s attention ...Young people of Jacob’s age and situation are often unclear on who they are and what they believe. But it is to the detriment of Necessary Errors that these issues are also unclear to the reader and perhaps the author. In other words, the book suffers from a case of the mimetic fallacy, in which the style matches the subject too well. Crain joins his character’s youthful, confused perspective rather than transcending it ...Despite these caveats, Necessary Errors is often quite appealing thanks to Crain’s lovely, sure-handed prose. Line by line, the book is chock-full of masterly word choices and images ... Necessary Errors heralds the fiction debut of a writer with intelligence and an engaging prose style. The book also serves as a document of a unique cultural moment that has vanished.
Garth Greenwell
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewIt’s a compliment to Greenwell’s writing that the vividly written sex scenes are the least compelling aspect of this wonderful book ... What Belongs to You is a rich, important debut, an instant classic to be savored by all lovers of serious fiction because of, not despite, its subject: a gay man’s endeavor to fathom his own heart.
