RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe narrative crackles with satire, even before Boyet innocently lands himself at Guantánamo as the first detainee captured on United States soil and decides to bring the place a little flair by removing the sleeves from his orange jumpsuit ... You’ll also be twisting a lip upward at the Bellowesque brio of Gilvarry’s language ... The real purpose of the comedic bravura is not to amuse you. It’s to soften you up for the horror that comes raining down in the final 50 pages, when Boyet, so lately the toast of the runway, is interrogated, humiliated and given a close-up view of state-sponsored brutality ... Comedy, we’re reminded, often has an ulterior motive. Here the intention could hardly be more serious — to scare the smirk off our mugs as we enter Year 10 of Guantánamo’s use as a prison, with no end to the suffering in sight.
Sam Lipsyte
RaveNew York MagazineSlacker narrators have never been the most appealing literary subgroup ... Lewis \'Teabag\' Miner, the wiggy epistolary narrator of Sam Lipsyte’s new novel, Home Land, is the exception who proves the rule—indeed, with any luck, he could be the one to retire it, and make aimless American middle-aged men respectable literary figures once more ... The upshot is that what seems at first to be yet another in a long line of contemporary self-pitying narrators turns out to be someone surprisingly fresh and angst-free ... Admittedly, some readers might find the novel’s humor a little too dark ... Still, for a pace this frantic, few of the fireworks are duds.
