PositiveThe Guardian (UK)James Hannaham’s novel is besotted with the stories and local legends of Brooklyn, and the perspective of a returning native on the borough’s galloping gentrification is irresistible. So there’s some light satire on the crafty white boutiques displacing the businesses Carlotta grew up with; this provides distraction from the intensity of the trauma she lives with, even if it doesn’t really strengthen the novel ... Still, Carlotta’s passion for life is unstoppable. Her story beats on, the narrative third person regularly bursting open into a surging stream of consciousness ... Carlotta’s charm and zest allow the reader at times to forget the horror she has lived through, although Hannaham does not stint on some appalling abuse. To end a story like this with a self-consciously Joycean affirmation might seem inappropriate – and yet his heroine’s dauntless spirit means that when it comes, the \'Yes honey, I do, honey, I’m a say Yes motherfucker\' is wholly fitting.
