RaveHarvard ReviewFernández’s conversational, essayistic narration guides the reader sure-footedly through a minefield of political absurdity, shining a blacklight on doublespeak and empty political theatre ... Fernández’s narrator is refreshingly down-to-earth. It’s fair, and uncontroversial, to deduce that this narrator is an authorial stand-in, but Fernández doesn’t use this as an excuse to pose or preen. Her prose is unfussy, limpid, direct. The demotic present tense of her non-narrative morphs seamlessly into collagist digressions ... In her prose and her collaging are clarity, humility, playfulness. The overall effect is the sort of lightness championed by Italo Calvino—a lightness meant to counterbalance the weight of living. Fernández knows that writing about dark subject matter does not necessitate making the reader’s life more difficult. Her books illuminate rather than bludgeon.
