RaveThe Star TribuneLet\'s just say this book is exceedingly charming and get that out of the way ...This is one of those books that is hard to categorize, though it hardly matters. Written with the simplicity and wonder common to children\'s literature, Perestroika in Paris is smart and interesting enough to engage grown-ups — who might find, in this unlikely alliance of animals, a hint of the comfort of companionship among strangers so sorely lacking in our contentious moment.
Ann Patchett
PositiveThe Star TribuneAnn Patchett made this up! Well, duh, you might say — it’s a novel, she’s a fiction writer. And yet what’s striking is how little like fiction it feels, with Danny Conroy telling us about his life as if someone asked: What’s the deal with the Dutch House? ... For all its memoiristic feel — the meetings and marriages, curious incidents, explanations and missed chances, as Danny goes to medical school but then to work, like his father, in real estate, always under the watchful eye of his beloved motherly Maeve — the story has the makings of a fairy tale: the exiled children, the enchanted house, a touch of Cinderella, a hint of Hansel and Gretel. And squaring off at the heart of either, life story or fairy tale, are the lessons of absence and loss: how to love what’s gone, and what remains.
