RaveThe New York Times Book Review\"As cerebral as she is, Kate is alive to influence and sensation, and her experience of the city is not logical but dreamlike and immersive, which Hoby depicts in image-filled language that’s arresting without being overwrought. There’s a kinetic New York magic that Hoby taps into ... They could be stock characters, but Hoby breathes life and nuance into them, in part by making them self-aware enough to know they are, to an extent, types, involved in some subtle, ongoing performance where they risk becoming parodies ... What initially reads like a wry, sharply pointed, if familiar, comedy of egocentric sophisticates gains depth and emotional magnitude as it goes.\
Julie Buntin
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review'We were basically statistics,' Cat tells us, but one of Buntin’s achievements is in acknowledging that reality while constructing characters that are anything but ... There’s a risk in writing straightforward, first-person prose about muted passivity, namely that such prose can begin to exemplify it, especially next to the more beautifully descriptive sentences here. And a few moments might have been more powerful with a little less of Cat’s somewhat redundant commentary on the nature of memory, time and loss. This generous, sensitive novel of true feeling is at its most moving when it sweeps you up without too much explication, becoming both a painful exorcism and a devoted memorial to friends and selves who are gone.
