MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewHer insights are sharp, and her engaging intelligence is a welcome guide, but as the memoir proceeds, her distinctive voice grows fainter, drowned out by the clamor of her forebears ... No resolutions are reached, but when the memoir nears conclusion, transitions soften and Spiegelman’s account takes on an inchoate, oceanic quality ... It’s a beautiful ending, but it comes at a cost: The narrator we knew seems to have disappeared, dissolved in the gene pool.
Joyce Carol Oates
PanThe New York Times Sunday Book Review[A]ll along, Oates has rejected the terms of the memoir. Now, having nearly completed the chronologically connected body of the book, she seems to turn away from the reader as well. It’s an odd, alienating way to leave things. The hodgepodge of biographical scraps she offers in the last two brief sections...does little to make up for the reader’s disappointment.
