RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewReid is a social observer of the highest order, knowing exactly when a small detail or beat of dialogue will resonate beyond the confines of the scene ... She never judges her characters. Her world, like the real one, is populated by people whose shortsightedness lives alongside good intentions ... With her perceptive eye and ear, Reid imbues her novel with the stuff, literally and figuratively, of life ... I found myself thinking of certain writers who have, over the years, elected themselves as \'capital C\' Chroniclers of contemporary America. With this book, Reid demonstrates that she deserves a place in the running.
Julia Argy
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewArgy does an admirable job of describing the flimsy cheapness of everything that surrounds the contestants ... Argy has a keen and often funny eye for detail...and evokes the fetid coziness-meets-eroticism of female friendship with aplomb. Her prose is absorbing, and Emily’s story does, thankfully, turn away from the strictures of the show in which she has been cast ... However, given the familiarity of reality TV, a more delineated character is needed to elevate the book, and Emily’s haplessness comes to feel less like a choice and more like a reluctance, on the part of the novel, to commit ... The attempt to play both sides...ends up reinforcing the myths of the world that the novel attempts to subvert, even as the plot twists ... It’s a worthy topic to explore, but in resisting a full life for its heroine, The One stops short of truly doing so.
Alison Fairbrother
PositiveThe New York Time Book Review... warm and funny ... Fairbrother delineates Ellie’s mind following her father’s death — her obsessive thinking, her attempts to distract herself, her subsequent plunges back into the reality of loss — with well-wrought observation of the rhythm and patterns of grief ... Ellie’s careless behavior represents an underexplored and therefore exciting investigation into a family dynamic — one in which a daughter responds to her father’s reckless entitlement not by shrinking into herself, by becoming ultra-virtuous or self-destructive, but by acting out with similar reckless entitlement in turn ... Though the mystery of the baseball and tie rack leads us through the plot, I found myself wishing the objects played a lesser part. The neatness of that journey and Fairbrother’s steady movement toward closure feel at odds with the strength of this book, which is the depiction of a smart, talented and sexual young woman who is in the process of learning, as adults must, to balance pride with humility, pain with pleasure, and acceptable fictions with uncomfortable truths.
