RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewLosing It is cringingly insightful about sex and dating and all the ways we tie ourselves into knots over both ... Rathbone slyly constructs a female protagonist who is a product of a sex-crazed culture but not a victim of it ... The genius of Losing It is that Rathbone resists turning her novel into a conventional romance. Julia wants sex. She never mentions love.
Joy Williams
RaveThe RumpusLike Flannery O’Connor, another writer to whom Williams has been often compared, Williams has a knack for skewering the falsely righteous ... Considered as a whole, these stories repeatedly show us the violence and viciousness of human ways and God’s powerlessness to change our course. Williams lightens the blow by combining the sacred and the trashy, using prosaic language to talk about God and sarcasm to undercut some of our most revered beliefs and thinkers. You’ll laugh and feel heartsick at the same time.
Samantha Hunt
PositiveThe RumpusMr. Splitfoot is also a deeply humane and even feminist book. Despite its gothic and ghostly undertones, the female characters are not, in the usual fashion, punished for making mistakes... the novel seems deliberately committed to offering new endings to strong, unconventional women.
