Gripping and savagely beautiful ... Not the courtroom narrative of pain and testimony and justice one might expect from this setup. It is more like a journey into hell ... At his best, Hertz sheds the trappings of traditional realism, adopting instead a swerving, almost psychedelic style that mirrors the abrupt and mercurial perceptions of a turbulent mind ... Hertz has managed to tell a story of queer healing with all the narrative force of a thriller and the searing fury of an indictment. It’s an achievement of language, of style, in which the process of finding one’s way back to the world is considered at least in part as an act of learning to 'speak the unspeakable.'
This forceful, necessary novel, which includes graphic descriptions of sexual assault, depicts the often silent suffering and unfathomable effects of sexual abuse. Readers of Garth Greenwell or Eimear McBride will find it well worth diving into.
[A] scorching portrait ... he prose is remarkable, alternating from lush sensuality to unsparing brutality to quick cutting asides ... This marks the arrival of a vital new talent.
Sharp, candid ... Dylan’s narration strives for a kind of hard-won stoicism but often reads as flat; the characterizations of Moans and other secondary characters...are relatively thin; and plotwise the novel cycles from a memory of abuse to self-sabotage to desperate gestures of love and affection. Hertz’s talent for evoking the horrors and consequences of abuse runs deep, but the effect is of a short story stretched past its limits. A promising debut seeking storytelling to match the trauma it evokes.
