PositiveCalifornia Review of BooksThe novel lacks a developing plot. It’s much more a collection of incidents, some involving characters who have appeared in previous chapters, but others free-floating ... I still recommend reading the novel, even though it is far from Pynchon’s best. It offers the pleasures of his very inventive imagination in chapters that are, in effect, separate episodes to be consumed in a manner similar to a collection of short stories ... Like the sentences, the novel offers an intense rhythm of revelation that is an end in itself, more important than plot.
RaveCalifornia Review of BooksWhen I read The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny I hadn’t known Kiran Desai had devoted twenty years to creating the novel, but I suspected a very long devotion to its making ... Desai produced 5,000 pages of a manuscript that came down to 688 printed pages ... The details invented for all of those discarded pages were not wasted.
PositiveCalifornia Review of BooksFlashlight’s nineteen sections, each focused on a situation in the life of a central character, are tour de forces, the situations inventive, the writing rich and intricate, the insights illuminating ... More an integrated collection of stories than a plotted novel.
Tricia Romano
RaveCalifornia Review of BooksRomano’s subtitle makes the point. A unique tabloid weekly centered on a few blocks of below 14th Street Manhattan did become a force that changed American culture by first changing American journalism ... Beyond the abundance of information Tricia Romano provides in the book, her unique presentation should be noted.
Hisham Matar
RaveCalifornia Review of BooksHaunted ... Hisham Matar in writing My Friends does possess that ability, the articulateness, to convey how it feels to be Khaled, to lose all control, and to enact a life that was not meant to be his.
