PositiveBookforum...[Judah] builds up a plausible composite portrait of a Ukraine ideologically bifurcated yet still sadly homogeneous in its poverty, isolation, and insecurity. Unfortunately, we can hardly double-check his picture, for he serves up his interviews in watery stews: an original word or two, once in a while a verbatim phrase, and all the rest summarized by him. Why on earth an experienced journalist would do this is beyond me...This is so ubiquitous a fault in his book as to nearly extinguish what could have been a deep and diverse compilation of voices ... Judah gives a very helpful overview of Ukraine’s systemic economic difficulties...he is interested in structures and world pictures. He often succeeds in making his abstractions vivid ... he is brave, thoughtful, self-effacing, and effective.
Annie Proulx
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewProulx employs a sophisticated narrative strategy of oscillating focus. Sometimes the techno-commercial practices of a given era are foregrounded ... Annie Proulx is on the side of the angels. We need more writers like her to hammer home the message that we had better stop mistreating one another and our planet. Unfortunately, hammering is just what she does ... The whole novel suffers such two-dimensionality ... Worse yet are her stylistic infelicities. Sometimes her Native American characters speak a cigar-store pidgin to one another, only to drop it further down on the same page ... But although Barkskins comes out poorly when considered line by line, many characters linger in the mind ... Proulx is particularly effective in conveying the effect of one generation on the next.
