RaveVanity FairFew things in Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut \'novel\' are placed within the reader’s immediate grasp, but this image of tight, spiralling exuberance at least strongly suggests itself as a description of its author’s prose style, a style which, while it flits boldly between voices and tenses, narratives and sub narratives, the postures of essayism and the disclosures of memoir, remains radiantly distinct and always exhilarating to read ... The narrator’s compulsively keen-eyed and neurotic reflections on such formative moments—which mostly involve reading and writing, but also trauma, and sex, and the cryptic power struggles that define certain relationships—form the book’s meandering spine. But what’s most striking about this Künstlerroman (the account of an artist’s growth to maturity) is how uninterested its artist seems to be in interpreting her own experience ... Even her most surreal digressions are laid down with sublime specificity and precision ... So many of Bennett’s lines are worth quoting in full. Because she is, first and foremost, a master of the sentence, directing the foggy, expansive contents of her mind through one breathtaking construction after another.
Chris Power
RaveVanity FairChris Power’s elegant first novel is a slyly ensnaring literary thriller written in immaculate prose ... an almost self-effacing commitment to unadorned clarity ... Power’s restraint pays off, making for a subtly immersive read, his sentences rippling like clear water even as the story’s murkier undertow pulls you out to sea. He doesn’t skimp on themes either, raising interesting questions about whether stories draw their power from reality or imagination, who (if anyone) owns them, and what privileges narrative control confers on the teller. Contemporary socio-political issues aside, A Lonely Man is a gripping and deftly controlled novel that proves Power is as good at writing books as he is at writing about them.
George Saunders
RaveVanity Fair... lively, edifying essays ... It’s an ambitious reverse-engineering project for which his former career serves him well ... This is a book about craft, but it’s not highly technical, and it’s not just for writers ... another generous, funny, and stunningly perceptive book from one of the most original and entertaining writers alive.
Chapo Trap House
PositiveVanity Fair...a foul-mouthed, reference-heavy, kangaroo-court-jester idiom that gives the book’s many short passages verve and sustains a brisk tempo through diverse themes of high and low culture. Although irony is held constant, readers will be kept on their toes tracking the shifting perspective of the narrator’s composite voice ... The book is a satirical barnstorm of the U.S.A. past and present that emphasizes the country’s pathological relationship with capitalism and pours caustic blame on both parties for the present state of the nation ... Some readers, including even hardcore fans of the podcast, will find the book’s style self-indulgent—arcane references and in-jokes riddle every chapter and absurd fictions bookend moments of solid analysis without any shift in tone to tip off casual readers. However, composing a unified style from the voices of five individual authors (Frost is not one of the writers) is a difficult stunt to pull off, and one they manage capably for 300-odd pages. The book is also a rich source for anyone curious about the White House’s ongoing political circus, and the cultural factors influencing an increasing number of young American Leftists.
