PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksReaders are made to consider that people decay just as cities crumble, and to mull over the proposition, found in Kristen’s notebook, that 'to abandon something beautiful is where the crime rests.' In this way Radtke counters the potential argument that ruinophilia desensitizes one to suffering and human relatedness ... Kristen’s inaccessibility also makes readers aware that we aren’t given access to others’ thought process either. Imagine Wanting Only This often presents us with characters who, in their most riveting and detached moments, remain wordless. This memoir’s realization of urgency expresses itself in human beings’ silence, which might frustrate readers of prose memoir. But here it is an opportunity for Radtke’s readers to focus, stare, wonder — to remain within urgency itself ... The clarity of the book revels in location, and not character. This is a riveting use of memoir. This is as alienating as it is universal, smug as it is generous, a conclusion as much as an opportunity. Imagine Wanting Only This’s deeply personal aesthetic doesn’t concern itself with others’ points of view. Each reader must decide for herself how successful the work is.
