PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewOne of the most striking effects of Carl’s \'doubling\' is the insight it offers into how difficult it is to be a good man ... a book that could easily span several books, but its ambition is to be all-encompassing, to lay all of its contradictions in one space and see what complicated truths arise. Depending on one’s desire for narrative unity, this can feel, at times, a bit jarring. Carl chooses not to dramatize the ending to several plot threads, most notably the story of how he and D’Amico healed their marriage. Nearing its final pages, I had scrawled so many questions in the margins that I began to question the nature of my curiosity. A new thought emerged: that this is one of the risks and delights of a good memoir. If the writer has done the job well, the reader falls in love — and one principal feature of love is that it craves access to every part of you.
Jordy Rosenberg
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewJack’s adventure may not be immediately accessible to all audiences. Voth informs the reader that his manuscript may only be decoded by someone...who has lived on the margins of society. Someone who also, I might add, enjoys queer theory, 18th-century frame narratives, prison abolition literature, Marxist historical readings, a surprisingly lengthy subplot involving a copy of Spinoza’s Ethics and a running footnote hall of mirrors to rival Borges ... Rosenberg’s chimeric prose prevents all of this from feeling too pedantic. His numerous stylistic influences...while jarring at first, cohere by the third act ... Rosenberg...is also very funny, a virtue that may persuade readers to persevere through some of the novel’s more theoretical sections ... The climb may be steep, but the view from the top is grand.
