PositiveThe Boston Globe\"But because this is Susan Orlean, with her uncanny ability to reveal the complex (and surprisingly compelling) machinations behind the seeming banality of the everyday, The Library Book is anything but dull ... There are a few moments that Orlean broaches, but doesn’t fully mine, the subtext of the stories she presents ... More intimate explorations are also fleeting ... Still, what I appreciate most about Orlean is how genuinely interested I believe she is in worlds outside of her own, and of the obvious respect she offers to those who populate and power them.\
Rebecca Kauffman
RaveThe New York Times Book Review...Kauffman has done something remarkable with The Gunners, the now grown group of childhood friends who adopted the moniker from the mailbox of the abandoned home they used as an after-school squat: She’s made spending time with them not just tolerable, but delightful. And she’s achieved this not by manufacturing likability, but by so convincingly rendering the affection between them that you accept each character’s foibles as readily as they do one another’s ... using Mikey, the most emotionally deficient of the friends, as the primary lens can be frustrating because his narrative hurries through the most fraught moments in the story. As a reader I understand that he wants to flee, yet I can’t help wanting to stay. Still, there’s so much generosity and spirit and humor shared by whatever characters are on the page at any given time that I was always happy to accompany them.
