RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewWhat’s most impressive, reading it, is how naturally and perfectly the mammoth fits into the narrative’s contemporary reality, and how much the story depends on the presence of the mammoth — separated from her mate and offspring by space and time — to explain what has happened to the characters and their modern family ... It will be tempting, but hard, for readers to choose a favorite among the stories here ... The stories have that merry, postmodern humor, but also a classical love of real human emotion ... It seems one of the things a writer is doing in developing a voice is working out a careful calibration between the imagination and the world it encounters and attempts to understand ... In Pierce’s work, there is a deep marriage between the two, a vital connection and a natural partnership.
Ramona Ausubel
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewReading this, you’d be tempted to think the imagination’s work is to make life more beautiful. And isn’t that plenty? But by the time you come to the sixth story, the wonderful \'Remedy,\' a near novella-length meditation on mortality, it’s clear that Ausubel’s imagination wants to do much rougher, harder work: It wants to offer consolation for how ghastly things can get, a type of healing that only reading can provide. All 11 of these stories are deeply involving ... \'Come with me and be adored, deep below the earth,\' one of Ausubel’s characters, who happens to be a Cyclops, writes in his dating profile. This doubles as the writer’s invitation to the reader to enter her very private, haunting and beautiful worlds.
