PositiveThe Telegraph (UK)As the land is divided up, so is Erpenbeck’s book. Each character initially seems to be isolated into a discrete story, just as most are, at one time or other, enclosed in a confined space – a wardrobe, an oven, a prison cell. The most poignant version is, inevitably, that of Jewish Doris, who hides, and dies, in a pitch-black closet in the Warsaw Ghetto ... No story is given priority but each instead hints at the connections that place forges between various owners, renters and subtenants. Erpenbeck encourages us to act like detectives, noting the re-emergence of previously insignificant details in new contexts.
Deborah Eisenberg
MixedThe GuardianTwilight of the Superheroes consists of six stories about complicated, and far from nuclear, family life … Eisenberg has long been interested in considering the political contexts and resonances of personal lives. But, like many writers who have (perhaps prematurely) tried to 'deal with' 9/11, she ends up resorting to cliches about the return of normality, the end of empire and the glory of the Manhattan skyline. At their best, Eisenberg's stories reveal the abstract absurdity as well as the pain of human relationships.
