PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksJacob’s youthful frame of reference, his ardent sincerity and his misapprehensions about what he is or ought to be doing as a young American gay man living in an unfamiliar country are a big part of what makes Necessary Errors a constant pleasure to wander through ... while Jacob may be questionably reliable in his sense of himself and his own motivations, Crain’s account of life in Prague in 1990 and 1991 is abundantly evocative and, mostly, right on the money ... Without much of a plot per se to drive it forward, the novel simply accompanies Jacob over the course of nine or 10 months ... One of the impressive feats that Crain pulls off in Necessary Errors is to involve us closely with all the individual members of this group, and he draws each of them sharply, almost entirely through dialogue ... Crain himself has mentioned in interviews that he hasn’t been back to Prague since 1993...But one thing this large-spirited novel demonstrates is that even the errant missions of our youth maintain a necessary resonance long after we believe their influence has faded.
