PositiveThe New York Times Book Review... a book in which both my grandparents would recognize themselves ... This is weird, complicated territory—by which I mean it’s fantastic ... thrives as a morally complicated travelogue, but when the action slows—and the Polish legal reclamation process is, uh, not swift—things can get a little hairy. A chapter of rhetorical dialogue about reclamation ethics comes from nowhere and goes nowhere, and the author’s conversations with his living relatives feel stifled, like something’s being held back. It’s not the first book that would benefit from 50 pages falling out of the binding ... But it is original, and it finishes strong.
Jonathan Waldman
PanThe New YorkerWhen grand vision meets repeated humiliation we usually get tragedy or comedy. But SAM is not sad, or funny ha-ha. It is peculiar, though ... some major tonal weirdness. Waldman seems determined to write an epic entrepreneurship tale — and it blinds him to the reality of poor SAM, while rendering Scott Peters nearly mute ... the monotony of chapters devoted to each gig exposes the book’s most inexplicable flaw — the chasm between what Waldman reveals and what he withholds ... What’s missing is Peters’s voice ... The scarcity of the protagonist’s voice is so bizarre that it becomes a distraction. Did author and subject have an arrangement restricting quotes? Was Waldman not present for many of the events he recounts? Is Scott Peters … a robot? ... If Peters’s absence is mystifying, the lack of key financial facts in a book about entrepreneurship is unforgivable.
Sam Lipsyte
MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"Hark is split into halves, the first of which is extremely funny ... the story unravels some in Part 2 ... Many of [Hark\'s riffs] are dazzling, but hardly all of them, and Hark is in the book a lot ... [Some riffs can be] Meta, sure. But meta-boring is still boring ... Lipsyte tries to give his characters cleaner moments of salvation before wrapping things up, but this being a Christ allegory tucked inside a satire, it’s safe to say it doesn’t end terribly well for anyone. It’s a shame. Not only because so much of Hark is brilliantly alive, but because everyone in it could use a bit of mercy.\
Michael Finkel
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThe Stranger in the Woods started as a 2014 GQ magazine article, and its journey to a petite 200-page book is similar to the one a meatball takes on its way to becoming a meatloaf. There’s something tasty here. There’s also a good deal of filler ... Finkel shrewdly plays the punching bag while Knight alternates between jabs and details ... Only in the epilogue do we learn that author and subject had just nine one-hour prison meetings. It’s the kind of thing readers should know earlier, especially since the poverty of access leads to some bad decisions ... All this seems like obvious padding, but to give Finkel the benefit of the doubt, it may simply be that his affinity for his amazing hermit got the best of him. He does a remarkable job persuading one of the world’s more recalcitrant individuals to open up, but Finkel wants more, and it’s strange that he doesn’t recognize Knight’s limitations.
