MixedThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThis novel glows with finely crafted prose. Its luminous landscapes — environmental and psychological — lift it to the realm of literary fiction and the genre of magical realism ... Its direct espousals, of the power of love and story-telling, taste bland, and its simplistic politics begin to grate. Barbery’s elliptical prose opens controversial topics, such as the status of feminism, the aestheticization of war, sustainability, and the persistence of religious faith in a secular world, but does not let them breathe.
