PositiveBOMB100 Times originated as a series of Facebook posts, and Woods maintains the informal style—they read as if she’s sharing trauma with a friend ... The descriptions feel compressed and at times unfinished. And, in a sense, they are, since another incident lurks right around the corner. The effect is unsettling ... Woods indicts not just men and boys for aggression, but also the culture that allows this type of behavior to continue ... No one should be alone in telling their stories of surviving sexual violence, and Woods underscores not just the toll of abuse, but also the lack of bodily autonomy for women, girls, and anyone expressing femininity ... By articulating the full range of her own experiences, Woods stresses the need for a dramatic shift in societal attitudes if we ever want to live in a culture in which rape and sexist discrimination are no longer routine.
Juliet Escoria
PositiveBOMBEscoria’s descriptions are moving in their absences and silences ... Juliet the Maniac conveys the enforced distance of a society that refuses to care, or care adequately, but also the critical distance of a teenager developing her own worldview. It isn’t the drugs that matter (or it isn’t only the drugs). It’s the electricity that pulsates from within the prose. That fire burning inside. What Juliet the Maniac manages to convey so well is the development of the teenage brain revealed in the moments where Juliet goes from trying not to feel, to feeling everything, to feeling nothing, and then to feeling something else, something \'realer than real.\'
Alex Abramovich
PanThe San Francisco ChronicleAbramovich befriends many of the Rats, whom he interviews in detail, as well as at least one ex-police officer, but he never quotes anyone else — no women, no uninvolved neighbors, none of the 'crackheads' routinely denigrated by the Rats. It’s not that Abramovich doesn’t do his research — he spends entire days at the Oakland Public Library, devouring any information he can get about local history. And yet his allegiance to the Rats blunts his critical engagement.
Paul Lisicky
MixedThe San Francisco Chronicle“The Narrow Door is meticulous in its description of grief and loss, and never shies from the full complexity and range of emotion in Lisicky’s relationship with Gess. And yet, there’s a sense that Lisicky is holding back when it comes to his relationship with M — there’s something missing.
