RaveNew City Lit\"...the kind of novel certain readers will embrace as speaking powerfully to their concerns in an enriching and stimulating way, and certain readers will want to throw across the room. I really don’t think she’d have it any other way. If you’d like to read a serious, challenging, cerebral novel of ideas, which doubles as an exegesis on the relationship of art to reality and (often, but not always) the female condition, then you’ll eat Parade up. If, on the other hand, you come looking for humor, narrative arcs, fantasy, or even character, you’ll be rather out of luck—Cusk alternately has no interest in these things or is quite purposefully doing something else ... if it’s occasionally tiring in its thematic rigor, I found the book both breathtaking and beautiful ... the rare book (or movie or painting) that sees the world and its relationships in so singular a way that it changes the way you see. While she won’t let you relax into easy truisms, Cusk in the end honors the reader with her strenuous striving for truth. I wouldn’t want every novel to be like this, but I’m glad this one is.\
