RaveElectric Literature...[a] laser smart, affecting, confounding, recalcitrant, infuriating, relentlessly stylish debut novel ... If you believe that storytelling begins with a character who wants and needs something and must face obstacles in order to get it, Catherine Lacey means to defy your expectations ... Using short chapters to stop for breath, Lacey stacks clause upon clause with unerring rhythm, one of those glorious gifts that not everyone’s been given and guided by that fabulous inner ear she teases out assonances and upends predictable constructions, modulating her phrases with repetitions, inversions, and tautly-strung wit, the novel propelled by sentences that wind their way inward before springing back out with renewed velocity ... Because Elyria wants nothing, and nothing is capable of causing her to change, Lacey is forced to find new ways of saying the same thing over and over. From this absence she pulls at strand after strand of remarkable prose, but a time comes when matters grow more dire and emptiness threatens to collapse on itself and yet above it all Lacey continues to pull more colored streamers from her sleeve.
