RaveThe New York Times Book Review... lovely ... a virtuosic portrait of midcentury America itself — physically stalwart, unerringly generous, hopeful that tragedy can be mitigated through faith in land and neighbor alike ... Hunt is not shy about his elegant ambitions with this small novel. The epigraph is from Flaubert’s A Simple Heart. The chapter titles are from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. This is not fiction as literary uproar. This is a refined realism of the sort Flaubert himself championed, storytelling that accrues detail by lean detail ... Hunt’s prose is galvanized by powerful questions ... What Hunt ultimately gives us is a pure and shining book, an America where community becomes a \'symphony of souls,\' a sustenance greater than romance or material wealth for those wise enough to join in.
Sarah Moss
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"... a compact, riveting book ... Moss immerses us in the pleasures of nascent sexuality and adolescent independence ... Moss is not much interested in giving Silvie and her rebellious tendencies room to breathe. This is a novel about being constrained, even trapped.\
Ron Hansen
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewA skilled researcher, Hansen anchors his book in the dark waters of character. The Kid’s story has been told many times. But not like this ... The real achievement of this novel is its pesky style. Like the Kid, Hansen revels in the lingo of tabloid and tale, of dime novel and detective story. He also highlights the haphazard nature of our fates.
