PositiveThe New York Times... a wonderfully written first novel, full of nuance and humor and strangeness ... Polzin writes beautifully about chickens; she is lovingly cleareyed about their “idiocy” and their dearness. She writes beautifully about everything: the sound of melting snow at the end of a Minnesota winter; a forgotten container of orange sherbet frosted over; private emotion ... Her eye for physical detail is surprising ... It’s a pleasure to see what Polzin sees ... Polzin’s story will be meaningful to many people for many reasons. It is companionable, cozy, smart and empathetic.
Michael Chabon
RaveThe Washington PostReading The Yiddish Policemen\'s Union is like watching a gifted athlete invent a sport using elements of every other sport there is -- balls, bats, poles, wickets, javelins and saxophones ... There are elements of an international terrorist thriller, complicated by religious conspiracy and a band of end-of-the-world hopefuls, and yet the book has a dimly lit 1940s vibe ... The prose is Chandlerian, too -- lyrical, hard-boiled and funny all at once ... The pure reach and music and weight of Chabon\'s imagination are extraordinary, born of brilliant ambition you don\'t even notice because it is so deeply entertaining ... Toward the end, the book falters a bit ... The solution to the murder mystery feels like the last piece of a puzzle snapped into place instead of a startling revelation; the international thriller ticks away offstage; some of the banter is too Howard-Hawks-perfect ... Still, what goes before is beautiful and breakneck; Chabon is a master of such contradictions.
Téa Obreht
RaveOprah Magazine...mordantly imaginative ... a desert story rendered in technicolor ... Obreht is the kind of writer who can forever change the way you think about a thing, just through her powers of description ... Inland is an ambitious and beautiful work about many things: immigration, the afterlife, responsibility, guilt, marriage, parenthood, revenge, all the roads and waterways that led to America. Miraculously, it’s also a page-turner and a mystery, as well as a love letter to a camel ... splendid.
