MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThis form can be provocative (think Amy Hempel, Diane Williams), but every single one of the words must glitter. Unfortunately, some of Polek’s fall flat, seemingly selected with the primary goal of arbitrariness ... Luckily, she has a keen eye for the absurd ... If she’s going for the uncanny, then some of her many, brief plots are too flimsy, not grounded enough in the recognizable, to succeed ... Polek’s imagery, though, comes through like flashes in a silent film.
Miriam Cohen
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review...curious, sometimes very dark — and often delightful ... Cohen’s greatest strength is in her realism ... In another break from the coming-of-age archetype, her characters — both the children and, especially, the adults — are distinctly unsympathetic: immature, perverted, selfish. No detail is spared in casting them as unappealing ... Behind the characters’ transgressions is an acute portrayal of failed relationships and communication, of what is expected of women and how they struggle to transcend the norms that require them to achieve certain things.
Nicole Flattery
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewFlattery’s writing is like a fever dream; the details are lucid, but the basics (place, time) are disorientingly hazy. Perhaps this rootlessness is intentional ... Many of Flattery’s protagonists have endured some sort of trauma, but the events are so buried we feel we’re getting only their bitter remains, and we’re unsure if those remains are strength, or apathy ... The cruelty in the worlds Flattery draws makes the tender moments in her stories all the more affecting.
