RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe real and the unreal are laminated so tightly in Duplex you find yourself suddenly lost; you don’t know where or when this book takes place, you don’t know what this book is about at all. And that is how it takes you in ... When I finished Duplex I had the unshakable feeling that I’d only read half of the book, and the other half was still in there and if I wanted to finish it, I’d need to read it again. I wasn’t wrong. By then I’d fallen in love with Davis’s writing, what it did to me, that combination of horror and excitement that spilled out of the book, into my past, into the now, into everything around me ... Davis is more subtle in her understanding of the kind of horror girls really need. It’s extremely rare, but there is plenty of it in Duplex and I’m grateful for every word ... strange things keep happening and do not stop ... So, when you are lost in the uncanny woods of this astonishing, double-hinged book, just keep reading, and remember to look up. Kathryn Davis knows right where you are.
Pénélope Bagieu
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThese drawings can act. They are alive with gestural attitude. They move, dance, struggle, fight back, fall in love, resist and wonder at the world. Some ham it up. Some suffer terrible abuse. To her credit, Bagieu doesn’t back away from drawing the marks of violence on their faces and their bodies, which may come as a surprise to those who are expecting a rah-rah young adult girl-power sort of read ... All of her stories follow a similar pattern ... that can feel a bit formulaic, but this seems to have more to do with the fact that the English translation is typeset rather than in Bagieu’s handwriting ... It’s painful to see this crucial part of her work replaced with type. It changes everything about how the stories are received ... Bagieu’s pen transforms these true stories into something that has the tone of a personalized fairy tale. And in the end, this turns out to be just perfect.
