RaveElleObreht is a natural literary descendant of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Gabriel García Márquez. She has assimilated and alchemized the techniques of folkloric storytelling and magical realism with a fresh contemporary sensibility, along with her own ethnic identity and life experiences. After a few pages, I forgot her age entirely except to marvel at the precocity of her work\'s vast intelligence, at the beauty of her descriptive prose, at her authoritative voice, and at her controlled mastery of a complex narrative.
