RaveThe Guardian\"Whitehead proves himself, among many other things, a poet of the American summer and its aspirations ... in Whitehead\'s hands [the setting], reeking of burning sucrose, is the perfect theatre for every anxiety of puberty: monetary, digestive, racial, sexual and criminal ... this remarkable novel goes far beyond gentle musings on awkward youth ... In this elegiac, spirited prose there are echoes of Melville, one of the first to write about Sag ... Whitehead\'s language here is relaxed and playful, a tribute to youth. But Ben\'s take on life is a fond, proud, nervy shout, and a triumph of rueful reason.\
Deborah Eisenberg
RaveThe GuardianYou might talk all day about Deborah Eisenberg's title which, in the end, eerily comes to signify every story in her wonderful book. Throughout, she concerns herself with the ‘superpowers’ of youth (and perhaps the waning ones of the no-longer-young American republic); lamentably, the power to shirk responsibility, politics, life itself. Stylistically the title story is the boldest of these six various tragedies — for that is what they are — written with a ruthless, compassionate eye and a subtle humour … Fear is a component of these stories - fear of what may interrupt your own history, fear of something gone wrong with the world (or rather, the real world asserting itself or being suddenly revealed), or of something that might go wrong with you.
