PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksCline has a knack for dissecting sexual politics, both within the cult and in the normal, suburban world of Petaluma. In the book’s goriest passages, she spares no detail, though you wish she would. She lingers in the explicit, exhibiting an aptitude for conjuring our basest human instincts, like Suzanne’s frenzied brutality and mercilessness as she kills a small boy. An unfortunate rock left unturned is the ideology of the cult, other than vague anti-establishment sentiments that trickle down into the girls’ scorn for the comfortable classes... Cline’s dreamy and meditative writing style is what makes the trip to the portentous ’60s underground so alluring — her voice is one that will undoubtedly garner a following of its own.
Paul Lisicky
RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThe beauty of his prose — his acutely attuned voice and sense of rhythm — allows him to bridge scenes that are decades apart, weaving Denise Gess’s descent into illness with the turbulence in his personal life, thereby titrating the tension, as well as the grief.
