RaveThe Washington PostLike most great capers, Confidence begins with a scrappy underdog down on his luck ... Dark and cutting humor ... Confidence is a propulsive, cheeky, eat-the-rich page-turner to satisfy the craving for a well-crafted caper.
Isaac Fellman
RaveNew York Times Book ReviewIt’s tempting to slot into the most evident groove of interpretation with Dead Collections: that vampirism is a metaphor for being trans ... But Sol’s story is much messier, much funnier and a lot more interesting than a one-to-one allegory, especially once he meets the sincere, luminescent Elsie ... The story that unfolds around them is equal parts romance and mystery ... Fellman knows exactly to whom he’s writing: the Elsies and Sols of the world, grown-up queer nerds who perhaps once identified as cisgender ... Fellman’s playful but deliberate approach to form, his deft way of presenting his own canon and then transfiguring it on the page, would feel familiar to them ... One of Fellman’s simplest but most effective form experiments is a matter-of-fact pronoun switch: When Elsie and Sol have gender-exploratory sex, the narration transmutes Elsie’s pronouns from \'she\' to \'he\' until his orgasm, a textual revelation of gender euphoria ... [A] thoughtful, acerbic, bracingly hopeful book.
