RaveThe New York Times Book Review...[a] wild, rollicking and wonderfully vulgar novel ... it is distinctly refreshing to read contemporary American fiction that concerns itself with such a fundamental problem of existence, far beyond the closed loops of affluent friends cloistered in the same old corners of urban America ... Pollock has set himself the task of working within the constraints of genre, but because he’s such a smart and funny writer, he’s incapable of delivering an empty entertainment ... Yes, The Heavenly Table is an old-fashioned yarn with a pretty predictable plot — but that’s the point, and as with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it is also a riotous satire that takes on our hopeless faith in modernity, along with our endless capacity for cruelty and absurd pretension ... Pollock grants each of his many characters, no matter how minor or wretched, a story and a soul.
