RaveThe Austin Chronicle... has such warmth spilling out of it that suddenly everything you\'ve dismissed as cliche about the city feels new and earned ... extraordinary ... this is a book with one of the most captivating, hot, weird, and wonderful casts in recent memory ... wears its heart – by which I mean its deep investment in honoring both the joys and struggles of LGBTQIA history – on its sleeve. McQuiston\'s ear for banter and sense of pacing are as keen as ever, and you\'ll find yourself surprised into both laughter and tears as the novel alternates between whirlwinds and moments you get to luxuriate in ... Overwhelmingly, it\'s the slow burn discoveries and the risks we see the characters become brave enough to take that make One Last Stop such a moving and transportative read. McQuiston manages to capture both the electricity of a crush and the moment when, all of a sudden, the daydream you\'re infatuated with becomes a real, whole, complicated human being that you\'d do almost anything for. She pins down the moments when suddenly a house doesn\'t feel like a pit stop anymore, when the worries in your head that your friends don\'t really want to hang out with you die down a little, when you realize you made something really wonderful happen for somebody else because you know them so well ... It\'s a very particular feeling to be in a room where joy and community and good humor are all palpable. How remarkable then, that One Last Stop takes you to so many such spaces – apartments, drag bars, diners, and so many subway cars, tunnels and bridges – and lets the reader bask in the love that lives, is remembered, and is cultivated there.
Isabel Wilkerson
RaveThe Austin Chronicle[Wilkerson\'s] aim is as ambitious as it sounds, which makes Caste\'s success as both a work of historical analysis and a tremendously engaging read all the more gratifying. Part of the accessibility and richness of the text come from the multiple points of entry Wilkerson offers to the idea of caste ... There\'s also the accessibility to self she offers; threaded throughout are personal stories about Wilkerson\'s experiences in the American caste system and her observations from her research for this book, which took her around the world ... It\'s clear that Wilkerson has tremendous belief in humanity – its capacity for warmth and ingenuity, as well as for cruelty and intentional ignorance – and that lends Caste a certain moral clarity and directive. Over and over, Wilkerson returns to the idea that we are not ourselves when we cooperate with a caste; we are participating in a lie either about what we are entitled to or about the limits of others\' and our own abilities. Unraveling a belief may feel impossibly slippery, but by framing America\'s gross racial inequality as a system, she insists that it can be dismantled, the actors can learn new parts, and we can all move toward freedom.
Elizabeth McCracken
RaveAustin Chronicle\"Under the gaze of McCracken\'s narrator... every life feels both plain-faced and extraordinary, with an undercurrent of yearning that leaves you with a pleasant ache at the back of your throat ... McCracken\'s love of language is the catching kind. You get the sense there\'s no exquisite turn of phrase she\'d turn down, if it occurred to her. Might that lead to belaboring the point, in another sort of book? Sure, but in Bowlaway, the journey through McCracken\'s lush, piercing prose is the destination.\
