Generous, tender ... The novel is most lovable when the family’s dynamic is explored. You can’t help wanting to pull up a chair when they gather around the dinner table ... Greta & Valdin is so brimming with life it can feel almost dizzying.
For a debutante, Reilly’s voice is delightfully confident ... The chapters are buoyed along by their breakneck internal monologues and deadpan dialogue ... It’s clear from the start that Reilly is a very funny writer, but I wish she would relax a bit. Eventually, the relentless quips wielded by literally everyone become exhausting.
This whole big stew of a story is a joyful examination of love in its many forms ... This is a wonder of a novel, its dialogue is sharp and witty, its characters recognisable. I cared deeply for the whole of this crazy family.
Though the characters judge themselves harshly, there is a lightness and instant relatability in the way Reilly examines their anxieties, and in turn, our own ... Reilly’s characters do not grip revelations in a way that obviously forces plot forward, instead they absorb ... Generous in the humour it delivers; generous in its story about love lost, family, and our fragility and hurt; generous in its embrace of contemporary New Zealand.
Reilly writes with a dry, sly humor and great love for her characters. She brilliantly builds the world of the siblings bit by bit, like a jigsaw puzzle ... Ultimately joyous and life-affirming.
In the wrong hands this could all be quirk for quirk’s sake ... But Reilly’s humor is so riotously specific, and the many moments of true poignancy so gently infused with that same humor, that the Vladisavljevics seem like no one but themselves.
Charming ... Reilly drops in lots of Māori words and phrases, but does so in a manner that readers will find immersive rather than alienating, thanks in part to Greta’s interest in learning what they mean. This offbeat millennial comedy has universal appeal.
