Exceptional, hilarious ... It would be easy for the satire to become heavy-handed. But Sammartino is extraordinarily good at balancing the farcical nature of contemporary America with the complex humanity of his characters. He’s also a magnificent sentence writer, with a gift for pulling poetry out of an American vernacular that recalls the early work of George Saunders, and a sense of the beauty in shoddy landscapes ... While many novelists are struggling to figure out how best to address the state of the nation — centerless, ridiculous and terrifying, doomed yet trivial, dire yet unheroic — Sammartino seems to have cracked the code.
There is so much grim humor in Sammartino's debut novel, such a keen eye for the details of rage and heartbreak, such empathy for humiliation, that we enjoy the ride, wincing and laughing along the way ... Sammartino, who pulls off a hilarious "Onion"-style headline one minute and wrenches your heart the next, is a remarkable talent.
Acerbic ... Sammartino takes aim at some broad and predictable targets as he traces the Rizzos’ downward slide through a collapsing America. Still, his characters’ mutual affection feels genuine. This satisfies on multiple levels.
Darkly comic ... Sammartino does have a knack for edgy writing, and occasionally he pauses to observe the world in well-crafted patches of staccato, propulsive prose. An uneven first outing but brimming with promise.