RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewExcellent and unflinching ... The book has all the hallmarks of Lehane at his best: a propulsive plot, a perfectly drawn cast of working-class Boston Irish characters, razor-sharp wit and a pervasive darkness through which occasional glimmers of hope peek out like snowdrops in early spring ... There is a tendency on the part of some contemporary authors to exempt their main characters from the prejudices of time and place, to make them more enlightened than they likely would have been. Lehane resists this ... Lehane masterfully conveys how the past shapes the present, lingering even after the players are gone.
Louise Kennedy
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewBrilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking ... Kennedy deftly reveals how violence in a conflict zone can more accurately be described as intertwined with and inseparable from daily life ... In Trespasses, as in life, humor provides an antidote to the darkest times ... Kennedy gives us children who are funny and surprising and uplifting in exactly the ways real children are, with none of the treacle that sometimes sneaks into fictional depictions of young people ... Kennedy writes beautifully about love ... As the novel progresses, it picks up a propulsive energy, the kind that compels you to keep reading straight through to the end. A rising sense of tension throughout comes to a shocking head. I am not a crier, but by the final pages of Trespasses, I was in tears. It’s a testament to Kennedy’s talents that we come to love and care so much about her characters.
Piper Kerman
MixedChicago Tribune... a perceptive, if imperfect inside look at our criminal justice system and the women who cycle through it ... When Kerman reflects on this time [smuggling drug money], she seems unwilling or unable to explore her motivations, and more often resorts to describing her lifestyle in list form ... In contrast, her depiction of arriving at the prison in 2004—saying goodbye to Larry, surrendering all her possessions—is poignant and thoroughly-rendered. If the author seems hard to relate to in her wild-child days, empathy abounds as she skillfully describes her sense of terror upon losing all freedom ... Kerman excels at chronicling the other women and their struggles, from teenagers doing time for drug-related crimes to a 69-year-old nun in jail for trespassing as part of a peaceful protest at a missile silo ... She is less successful at talking about herself. Occasionally, she opens up, and these moments are powerful. But, a public relations executive by trade, Kerman is often frustratingly careful, polite. She paints nearly everyone pretty rosily and without much nuance. Everyone, that is, except \'The Fed\' ... While acknowledging her privileged background, Kerman never fully dispels the reader’s discomfort when she more or less conflates her own case with those of the majority of the women around her ... Though certain aspects of her own story never quite seem resolved, her sympathetic portraits of these people stay with you long after the book is through.
Anton DiSclafani
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewDiSclafani excels at building suspense and has a gift for revealing private worlds through unexpected, telling details...As things progress, [protagonist] Cece seems more like an infatuated stalker than a devoted friend. Perhaps that’s the point, but we never get enough of Cece’s inner life to fully understand it. DiSclafani dangles suggestions about the sexual undertone of Cece’s compulsion and the notion that within a friendship 'one woman always needs the other woman less.' A deeper exploration of these intriguing motivations would have made the book all the richer.
