RaveThe Montreal Review of Books... remarkable ... an ingenious bit of multi-layered wordplay ... The comics medium is a perfect choice of form to deliver the story Grove is telling. Her drawing style might at first look naïve, but nuances emerge: she proves uncommonly adept at depicting the slight physical changes – in facial expression, in posture, in countless body-language tics – that can give a person’s emotional state away no matter how much they might want to conceal it. Formally, too, she incorporates enough variety to keep things fresh ... Grove has created a stunning artistic testament to the spirit and strength of will it required.
Emily Carrington
RaveThe Montreal Review of Books (UK)... stunning ... a remarkably assured work; it’s easy to forget that it’s a debut. Carrington’s drawing style, with the lines doing all the work, is reminiscent of Joe Sacco’s, and she has a sure hand at integrating image and text, maintaining a compelling narrative drive throughout. She proves herself especially adept at capturing the elusive essence of certain inflection points in life—boundaries you don’t realize have been crossed until it’s too late to turn back, ruefully recognized only with hindsight ... As the book proceeds past its halfway point, it becomes clear that what has been a memoir of trauma is also a meditation on the nature of justice—the need for it, the pursuit of it, and the limits of its reach ... not an easy read, but it is an essential one.
Rawi Hage
PositiveThe Montreal Gazette... a wild, viscerally exciting and often bleakly funny novel of ideas. Comparisons aren’t always useful, but this reviewer thought of a work portraying a very different time and place but equally unflinching in its de-romanticizing of a subject most of us prefer to avoid: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. There are also touches of the Latin American magic realism Hage loves.
Catherine LeRoux
PositiveThe Montreal GazetteA powerful tribute to forgotten women ... [Madame Victoria] confirms the 39-year-old Montrealer as one of Canada’s best and most adventurous writers.
