The book thrums with creative verve, mordant humor and amusing detours into subjects like art, avant-garde fashion and mixology ... Sometimes the book feels like it’s toppling under the weight of its details. Its rules aren’t always coherent ... Whether The Mortons is for you might depend, at least in part, on your tolerance for violence ... Still, the authors have kindly given Jessica at least a fighting chance of redemption (and maybe a hint of a sequel) at the end. I’d like to see what she makes of it.
Intense ... Readers should prepare to be haunted by the family’s cruelty, but they will root for Jessica as she seeks to finally claim compassion and empathy.
While the authors’ attention to atmospherics pays dividends, there’s an oddly persistent slackness to the storytelling, and given how much work is required of readers to keep track of Mortons living and dead, their motivations, and their secrets, to say nothing of their specialized argot, this long book is a heavy lift ... For patient readers, the novel affords some of the pleasures generated by Addams and Soprano family shenanigans.
Page-turning ... It adds up to a bracing and searching story about the lengths a child will go to make their family proud. Readers won’t want to put this down.
