PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewNew perspectives and back stories keep being introduced even toward the end, when we would really just rather know what is going to happen ... This wandering viewpoint — which seems too arbitrary to count as authorial omniscience — is annoying, but as unrest grows on the streets outside, and the characters become trapped in the apartment block, the novel begins to exert a sinister pull ... It is at this point that the full force of Osborne’s acutely drawn but bleak and bitter vision comes into play ... The main plot of the book seems incidental to these character sketches. There’s the murder, and some blackmail, but what draws Osborne’s finest sentences is observation and atmosphere ... It is no mean feat to make the ending of a novel truly shocking when the reader doesn’t particularly like or believe in any of the characters.
Wendell Steavenson
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewShe has material at her fingertips that many novelists can only dream about. This is both the great strength and the undoing of her fascinating and flawed new book, a work of fiction that lurches from excellent set pieces to frustrating passages of exposition and yet always has something interesting to say ... She is excellent on a war reporter’s difficulty with confronting her own vulnerability, her loss of perspective ... The political mysteries in Steavenson’s novel could be gripping, but the form-versus-content battle rages throughout ... In these middle sections, the stop-start nature of the narrative becomes particularly frustrating. Steavenson has such an abundance of material that it’s never clear what story she’s telling ... ultimately rewarding, even if the overall impression is one of a talented writer still transitioning from one métier to another.
