Self-consciously baggy ... Amazons’s chapter-capping sex scenes are at once frank and endearingly chatty ... Feels refreshingly out of place in 2026. At times it recalls the ambitious, chonky, libidinous fiction of the era ... The freedom is thrilling, indeed out of control. Scenes go on too long, to our delight. Cleo, bless her, can’t stop. DeLillo has written his share of sturdy female characters, but never in the first person, and never so willingly.
An exercise in concentrated silliness ... There’s a steady thrum of bewilderment running through Birdwell’s narration—it’s clear-eyed and removed in a way that few of DeLillo’s narrators are.
The tone of Amazons is zanier, more absurd, untroubled by nuclear annihilation ... Not a lost masterpiece. Some scenes drag, like runaway SNL sketches. The dialogue, although generally hilarious, can take on a rim-shot quality.
We are...treated to some of the funniest and most memorable sex scenes contemporary fiction has to offer ... Does finally add up to something significant ... A funny, flighty and (in select moments) thought-provoking novel ... The result is a little messy, and might not have suited the author’s grand literary project, but it makes for joyful reading. The only thing DeLillo should be ashamed of is that he tried to keep it from us.
This overextended put-on doesn't even try for parody, settling instead for the most predictable sort of effortfully breezy satire/sex-farce ... The entire enterprise seems like a delayed replay of a whole slew of sports/sex comedies...with only a few amusing jabs...to brighten the drab, giddy déjà vu.
