...[a] remarkable new novel ... From the very first pages, the narrator moves quickly through events that would provide enough material for several novels ... Sallis is playing with expectations of the shape of conventional crime fiction, which this book both is and is not ... Sallis seems to be speaking simply, telling a story without much shape of its own, but his ability to evoke moments of everyday life ultimately delineates powerfully the experience of a woman who matters to us, in a life that, from her own point of view, she feels 'taking shape around me.' The final shape of her life is achieved gradually, step by step, in her encounters with people and events that are ordinary and extraordinary, placid and violent, particular and universal, disconnected and inextricably intertwined ... Sarah Jane, though, is an extraordinary novel about a woman’s sometimes violent and ultimately insightful encounter with ordinary life.
Sallis...has a quiet way of narrating a powerful story of accidents and death. The lyrical language and ambiguous ending is reminiscent of the best of Craig Johnson’s Longmire stories.
James Sallis writes neither long nor often but always wonderfully ... His new book, Sarah Jane makes mild demands of the reader but with great and haunting rewards.
Little by little, one sideways reference or clue after another, the crime at the heart of the book emerges. And a silence builds, as large as the loss that Sarah Jane’s still carrying. Is it Sarah Jane’s own, or does it belong to one of the dead men she’s seen? ... Lit with insight, affection, and the deep tenderness that can accompany long-term grief, Sallis’ Sarah Jane is that most unusual of mysteries: one that investigates the soul, walking.
Author James Sallis has delivered a long list of excellent crime novels, as well as biographies and books of poetry. With its spare but insightful prose and probing exploration of the price of our sins, Sarah Jane fits among his finest ... Sallis imbues his story with an astonishingly real sense of place ... This book will leave you marveling about our ability to carve out a life, no matter how different it is from what we expected.
...[a] hypnotic, meticulously crafted crime novel ... An insightful character study of one woman’s reckoning with her own demons, this is also a powerful look at contemporary America. Sallis is writing at the top of his game.
