RaveThe AtlanticEngaging ... Exposes some awkward truths about the nature of American work ... Weaving in sympathetic portrayals of women who lost money and friends after working with MLM schemes, she recasts them as victims of a multigenerational swindle ... Read writes with scorn about the industry’s early architects...But she never disparages her sources, whose stories of drained bank accounts and dashed dreams she portrays only with empathy ... These vignettes keep the human toll of the schemes top of mind ... Read’s indictment of MLM outfits is predictable enough, but her research also reveals how much corporate America has in common with this shady economy, which has long been dismissed as a kooky sideshow ... Read ably explains why these businesses have appealed to generations of underpaid and insecure American workers ... Read names the leaders who benefit, and in doing so, she delivers a damning portrait of those who take advantage—and she humanizes the people they rip off. Investigating an industry notorious for doublespeak and euphemism, she calls things what they are.
Deborah Cohen
RaveAir Mail... riveting ... Cohen has a vivid eye for aesthetic details, even in scenes otherwise dominated by grisly action ... Cohen’s argument that the personal and political are intertwined, and that characters’ personal lives are shaped by global affairs, while compelling, occasionally feels a bit forced...But in other moments this framing shines, as she cites characters’ reflections on the dissolving borders between the personal and the political ... With the breezy scene-setting of a party reporter, the rigor of a scholar, and deep empathy for the humans behind these historic bylines, Cohen makes the correspondents come alive.
Fiona Mozley
PositiveThe Chicago Review of BooksElmet is a measured yet fiery debut that addresses epic violence, overturns gender expectations, and traces the coming-of-age of Daniel, a skinny, tender young man. The story weaves in and out of flash-forwards, which pop up often enough to lend the story a consistent sense of creep … Overall, Elmet glows as a heartbreaking and surprising contemporary Gothic novel. Original and sympathetic, the novel centralizes violence not as gratuitous fluff but as a necessary fact of life.
