PositiveThe Minneapolis Star Tribune...impressively depict[s] the parched, unforgiving landscape where dust storms destroy their animals and crops ... If you are looking for an uplifting, cheery read, this is not your book. I Will Send Rain, however, is a powerful rendering of human resilience.
Joan London
PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneCharacterization is the novel’s primary achievement. Readers will feel affection for Frank and the many secondary characters.
Maggie O'Farrell
RaveThe Philadelphia InquirerO'Farrell succeeds brilliantly with the novel's experimental form. Vignettes, focusing on a different time and place, and each told from a different point of view, combine for a nuanced, compelling narrative ... Reading between the lines, we cannot help discerning some sympathy for Daniel on the part of O'Farrell. She has succeeded in creating a larger-than-life main character.
Curtis Sittenfeld
PositiveThe Philadelphia Inquirer...[a] remarkably entertaining version of Austen's classic. Sittenfeld plucks the Bennet family from rural England in the 1800s and authentically plants it in contemporary Cincinnati ... some readers will 'mourn' the lack of restraint in Eligible, finding its humor too broad.
Helen Simonson
PositiveThe Philadelphia InquirerFans of Helen Simonson's 2010 debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, and readers who enjoy fiction steeped in Downton Abbey ambience will delight in The Summer Before the War. Set in the small coastal town of Rye in Sussex during the Great War, the book offers vivid description of town and country as well as a narrative laced throughout with quirky wit ... The book has many strong points but cannot quite conquer a first half in which virtually nothing happens.
