PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewAndrews unspools Lucy’s coming-of-age story in short numbered fragments, prose poems that at first seem random and out of order, but build in a logical sequence all their own. The technique isn’t always successful and the flurry of pop cultural name checks can read like a confounding shorthand — especially the overwhelming array of bands and singers. But more often Andrews’s writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O’Brien ... It’s her mission, [Andrews] has said, to tell the stories of working-class women. That’s a fine undertaking, but what makes her novel sing is its universal themes: how a young woman tries to make sense of her world, and how she grows up.
Patricia Bosworth
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewManhattan in the 1950s was an extraordinary place, particularly in the ecosystem where Bosworth found herself, roiled with changing social mores and artistic experimentation. A lifelong diarist, it appears that Bosworth can pluck verbatim exchanges from her journals, which makes her story deliciously vivid, if not exactly precisely crafted ... Bosworth’s coming-of-age tale is emblematic of the times, when women were poised to take control of their own bodies, yet still confined by restrictive cultural norms and legal hurdles."3
