PositiveThe Washington PostSmall Great Things is the most important novel Jodi Picoult has ever written. Frank, uncomfortably introspective and right on the day’s headlines, it will challenge her readers ... Yes, Small Great Things is overly long, with a meandering middle, a tendency toward melodrama and a rushed ending that feels glib. And Picoult will be fairly criticized for choices she’s made in her representations of people of color and an oversimplification of complex issues. But it’s also exciting to have a high-profile writer like Picoult take an earnest risk to expand our cultural conversation about race and prejudice.
Stuart Nadler
MixedThe Washington PostThis is a novel deeply concerned with how these women have been shaped by their relationships with men. But Nadler is also clearly interested in offering these women the opportunity to define themselves and their relationships anew. And it is to Nadler’s credit that Henrietta, Oona and Lydia are largely believable characters. But there are missteps. Even in a family as intellectual as theirs, the women’s emotions can seem overly distant. And they are largely disembodied characters, an odd thing in a book that is so much about women’s sexuality and so very much about shame and set at ages that are such cruxes of female physical life ... The Inseparables is elegantly written and often funny and sharply insightful.
