RaveHarvard ReviewMachado reels us in. With bewitching, at times chant-like prose, Machado invites the reader into her dream house, lets us look in all the closets and the empty rooms ... a maze of emotion and analysis ... Almost everything about the narrative is relentless ... There is no way out and no answer, and that feeling is part of the genius of this book.
Elif Batuman
RaveThe MillionsI slipped so completely into Batuman’s fictional world, convinced of its truth, that when I reminded myself that Batuman had written a novel, not a memoir, I felt let down. I so wanted it all to be real. But why? ... The layered truths and fictions of The Idiot compounded so that everything in the novel became true and real in a deep, shining way that cannot be achieved through essays.
