MixedThe San Francisco ChronicleThe town he writes here is filled with the flawed and graceful people we are (the slightly mad, the slightly devious, the slightly adulterous, the charming obsessives) as well as with those who have been so hammered by their losses on Oct. 14 that they cannot find their way back into the lives they led … Perrotta sets himself an ambitious task, to create a believable world after such a shattering event, and he pulls it off, with an admirable tenderness for his characters, an able craftsman's ratcheting of tension, and a lovely gentle surprise ending. At 355 pages, he also goes on far too long - this is yet another novel that would have been better shorter - and in the final analysis his characters are a little wooden.
Roger Rosenblatt
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewRosenblatt’s accomplishment is to draw the reader so completely into Murphy’s mind and heart and memory, so thoroughly into the poet’s amused (and sometimes bemused) consciousness, that the minimal plot and even less action are rarely cause for complaint.
