PositiveThe New York TimesMr. Carroll vividly evokes New York in midcentury ... He weaves a patchwork of disparate threads, threads unraveled from clerical vestments, that, when quilted together, spell out the single word that the book embodies ... Their [the protagonists'] awkward convergence becomes an incandescent, allegorical outgrowth of the agonizing introspection that Abélard and Héloïse undergo in their search for self-awareness.
