RaveThe New York TimesZink’s narrator is a knowing, omniscient figure who speaks directly to the reader while floating anonymously above the story, offering sharp observations and mordant commentary and smoothly moving things along in the manner of novels from an earlier century ... This lost mode of storytelling, updated by Zink, imbues the book with an elegance and confidence that are exceptionally rare now, and most welcome. Instead of the crabbed, neurotic tone that one might expect when treating such loaded material, she skips along with ease and clarity, summarizing, compressing and encapsulating, unflappably wise and in control ... This odd situation’s farcical unraveling harks back to Elizabethan comedy, and Zink exploits its potential with zany verve. The problem is that, in contriving her grand finale and systematically playing against type as she sketches her swelling cast of characters, her hold on the story loosens somewhat ... The damage isn’t fatal, though; the novel’s charm and intelligence run deep. It’s a provocative masquerade with heart, not just an exercise in role reversals, reminding us that the gaps and cracks between our insides and our outsides are the spaces where our spirits live.
