PositiveThe Houston ChronicleErdrich\'s evocation of reservation life seems close to perfect. No other writer today visualizes the Indian experience more vibrantly than the author, whose own mixed blood gives her a place in two worlds ... Yet she is capable of embarrassingly bad writing ... Last Report consists of a series of self-contained stories involving her familiar characters that could be in any of Erdrich\'s five previous novels ... These entertaining, sometimes fanciful stories have little to do with the plot. But Erdrich\'s plots, complicated, messy things that jump back and forth, are the least important element in her writing ... The book is about too many things -- cross-dressing, murder, incest, forbidden passion, rape. Mostly, though, it\'s about love.
Mary Gaitskill
PositiveThe Houston ChronicleAlthough the arc of the story takes place on a single rainy afternoon, through Alison\'s thoughts it travels between the East and West coasts and to Paris; the time moves from the 1970s to the present. Gaitskill accomplishes these shifts in concise, telling paragraphs that a less talented writer could not have managed ... Redemption is a concept foreign to Gaitskill\'s books, yet she decides it\'s been earned in this one. Maybe not. Still, the allure of Veronica lies not in its hopeful possibilities but in its suffering.
