RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksMcClanahan’s prose is a sweaty animal that pounces on the wounded, then drops its kills at our feet and stares mournfully into our eyes. In his eighth work of semi-autobiographical fiction, at the height of his powers, the author bites deeply into himself ... the power of The Sarah Book derives in part from its author’s ability to make the reader feel the depth of his pain in one sentence, then laugh at something awful he did in the next ... Many writers who make their names as experimentalists later settle into more traditional forms. McClanahan, however, continues to explore the outer realms of author-reader engagement, as in this intense, deeply affecting novel.
Mike Roberts
MixedBookforumThere are also points, typically reserved for final paragraphs a la Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, where Mike staggers briefly into worlds of genuine transcendence, revealing in his wounded palms some objective treasure pilfered from the drunken tombs ... There are flaws, however. First of all, Roberts’s musings can be overexplained and exhausting...He can also be snotty in a way that reads more vengeful than humorous ... All the drinking, fighting, and sleeping around are great fun for a while. But eventually, Roberts’s treatment of Mike’s frivolity, simultaneously serious and winking, grows tiresome. For me, this happened around the hundredth page. Here, I began to write off Cannibals in Love as a charming beach read for educated post-punks.
