RaveFull Stop...a tidily executed project, one with tremendous tonal intimacy and rhythmic language. (Given the lovely and propulsive and inward-turned prose, it’s clear that translator Lisa Dillman has done a masterful job.) ... Barba has intentionally chosen not to hold the readers’ hand and reassure us that yes, the way we feel toward the book – toward Marina, toward the girls – is how we’re supposed to feel ... beautiful very much in the manner of a Sally Mann self-portrait: precise in its plotting and intention, thick with mood and gloom, with a quietly dreadful bizarreness. It’s disarming and strange and wonderfully awful – and constructed very skillfully.
