PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewMany novels have been written on the devastating subject of school shootings...but in Only Child, the event itself is mercifully brief. By Page 10, the shooting is over. Navin’s true subject lies in the aftermath; it is a story of grief ... by employing the voice of a child trying to figure out the meaning of every action, every reaction, Navin is able to explore one family’s anguish to a sometimes excruciating degree of detail, with an innocent appetite for description unavailable to most adults ... Though the wide-eyed perspective is an asset to Navin, one occasionally feels the constraints of having so young a narrator, whose observations can veer toward the maudlin, and to whom every cliché has the appearance of a revelation ... Navin is so skilled at depicting, even in glimpses, the adults in the story, one sometimes wishes she had allowed herself to include their perspectives. She is wonderfully awake to the ways relationships suffer during periods of mourning.
Sara Novic
PositiveO: The Oprah MagazineThrough Ana's journey, Novi?, in tender and eloquent prose, explores the challenge of how to live even after one has survived.
Sloane Crosley
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewCrosley is an incisive observer of human nature in general and of a generation in particular — people circling the age of 30 who foster undue fondness for the retro culture of their youth.
