RaveToronto Star\"... sharp, painful, and fine ... plot summary can’t do this book justice. Rooney is fully aware of the conventions she’s playing with. The meat of the story is psychological, and here Rooney is as good as that great Victorian, George Eliot ... The author’s great skill is her ability to make the crises of youth reverberate hard and personally in readers, from social ostracism to loss of virginity to the heavy desire to feel like — you guessed it — normal people ... In the end, this crushingly beautiful book is a naked examination of how difficult honesty can be.\
