RaveThe Kenyon ReviewEven if she finds herself rooted in a feminine quest for self-empowerment and autonomy, the early Lispector bears witness to numerous interesting stylizations that galvanize and individuate her suffragette-ish concerns. Primary among these is a strain of mysticism, a tendency to use the magical and fantastical as a hopeful figure for every potential that lies beyond the stifling personae and conventions people are forced to adopt ... However, as these stories about female passivity and cipherdom mount up, it soon becomes apparent that Lispector isn’t simply targeting how women are expected to reflect the dictates of men. Instead, it transpires that her fundamental concern is authenticity in the deepest possible sense, the urge any right-minded human being has to live their life according to their own best judgment on who they are and what they want ... increasingly devious prose becomes a mirror to the anarchic incoherence that populates the self and the world ... In the end, the chaos and rawness [Lispector] so beautifully captures here is what ultimately frees her from being a simple housewife or girlfriend, and what ultimately makes The Complete Stories such a penetrating read. It displays a formidable modernist-feminist-existentialist at the peak of her formidable powers...
Javier Marias, Trans. by Margaret Jull Costa
RaveElectric Literature\"...[a] superb novel ... This is what’s most interesting about Thus Bad Begins, that Muriel and other chief protagonists aren’t opposed to falseness per se, but against inconsistent or imperfect falseness ... Juan’s narrations?—?as well as the colorful dialogs he enjoys with various members of Madrid’s literati?—?are remarkably approachable and inviting, if only because they contain so many observations and insights that the reader will find recognizably?—?if lamentably?—?true of life ... the challenging, comical, profound, and even sometimes erotic Thus Bad Begins rises up as one of the most intriguing novels Marías has written to date.\
Colson Whitehead
RaveElectric Literature[Some] passages and sections threaten to make The Underground Railroad a thoroughly disquieting and sometimes distressing read, even if Whitehead’s prose is masterfully terse yet three-dimensional in its presentation of pre-abolition America. However, it must be emphasized that, throughout its 320 pages, there always lingers a persevering slither of hope.
David Means
RaveElectric Literature[Means] employs a richly contoured yet unsentimental palette to depict an America that’s being 'left to sit and smolder as a monument to the riots' currently upbraiding its former peace. Torn apart by an interminable war effort in Vietnam and worsening social unrest, he paints the country as a wasteland of marauding biker gangs and equally marauding officials, seemingly held together only by the improbable survival of Kennedy and an all-but nationwide course of enfolding ... Ultimately, in writing a fictitious author into his debut novel like this, its real author has produced one of those rare, self-conscious books that operates on multiple levels, alluding to its own insufficiency while paradoxically becoming sufficient as a result. It works as a stylized reimagining of the Vietnam era, it works as an indirect revelation of the emotional truth of this same era, and it works as a subtle critique of the inability of stories and narratives to truly compensate when more than stories and narratives are needed.
Danielle Dutton
PositiveElectric Literature\"...rather than confirming her as the \'Mad Madge\' of the (newborn) newspapers, Dutton’s profile constructs her as a fully formed, complicated human being, as a woman whose interests and inclinations stem from a complex personal history. It’s this profile that’s the star of the novel as much as its subject, since it deftly weaves together primary and secondary sources to form a wholly integrated, believable and gripping account of a woman who didn’t belong to the times in which she was born, not least because these times were too volatile for her to ever plant herself in them.\
