RaveThe New York Times Book Review... a poignant, deeply researched account of the Pittsburgh Jewish neighborhood in the aftermath of tragedy ... propulsive ... He does a lovely job of bringing the essence of this charming, walkable place to life ... How \'Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood\' became the site of the most deadly antisemitic attack on American soil and what happened afterward unfold with the precision of the best suspense stories ... Oppenheimer is sympathetic to the ways Jewish culture stands at the crossroads of proud resistance and self-protective withdrawal, bold activism and self-effacement. The people he highlights are treated with a knowing, affectionate wink, a landsman’s recognition.
RaveThe San Francisco ChroniclePerhaps what most firmly links Elio to Oliver is their shared Judaism. We never learn how Elio's Jewish family came to reside in a small Italian village (their Italian is perfect, but there is still a sense that this was a migration, that they had arrived here from somewhere else), but Oliver is the first person Elio has encountered who wears his Star of David proudly around his neck. Elio grows to believe that an intimacy between the two would be almost a holy union, while a separation would be ‘galut’, the Hebrew word for exile and dispersal … The novel is told in retrospect; while most of the events take place over the course of a summer, this is the story of a man remembering an important moment in his past. Aciman carries the reader along by the fury of his language, tightly focusing on the all-consuming nature of love.
Patrick Flanery
PositiveThe San Francisco Chronicle[Flannery] is a writer deeply invested in the fluid nature of truth that inevitably operates in a world with only the outward appearance of privacy.
He is also a writer who puts his themes front and center. I Am No One constantly reminds us that its plot is primarily a vessel for the ideas ... Whether we share the protagonist’s growing alarm about the erosion of Internet privacy or not, by planting us so firmly inside O’Keefe’s exacting deliberations, the novel ensnares us in its noir-like web of anxiety.
