RaveThe Washington Independent Review of Books... startling ... This is not a novel about passing; one gets the impression Harry couldn’t if he tried. Instead, Okparanta has written something rarer. Harry Sylvester Bird is a bildungsroman for our time: a coming-of-race novel ... aises questions about whiteness, identity and its limits, and the psychology, politics, and culture of race. The America that Okparanta portrays is only a millimeter away from reality and, as successfully as any recent literary depiction, utilizes a potent mix of satire and horror to produce the creeping uneasiness that infuses so much of the American psyche right now. Okparanta is also exploring a (or perhaps the) tension at the center of American literature ... an incisive and innovative example of how such strangling national visions continue to manifest themselves today.
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
RaveThe Washington Independent Review of Books... while there are twists in the plot, the best surprises come from how Johnson manipulates the symbols and signifiers of Jefferson’s estate ... The author has a way with moments — the literary equivalent of narrowing her lids and giving a side-eye ... Johnson was a teacher in the Charlottesville public schools for many years, and her talent at portraying characters and situations that are sympathetic, frustrating, hopeful, thoughtful, angry, deluded, and inspired all at once must, in part, have been developed from many years of observation in a classroom ... Johnson makes it clear that this narrative is its own declaration ... The journalist Tracy Thompson wrote that, in the South, \'the line between ‘history’ and ‘current events’ is notoriously hard to draw.\' My Monticello is a thrilling demonstration of how surreal and intimate that faint boundary truly is.
