Brodesser-Akner is ridiculously clever, but never overly so and never merely for the sake of showing off her prodigious way with words. A big reason I love her writing — in any medium — is that every sentence serves the whole. Every word is carefully chosen and I trust that the journey she takes us on will end at a destination worth visiting ... This isn't a breezy beach read and, like Fleishman, you want to restart it as soon as you're done, to find what you missed.
At times the novel exhausts itself. It can seem a little like a machine that won’t power down even after it has started smoking ... The more time you spend with each character, the more delusional they seem to be, even as a sense of novelistic sympathy wells. Brodesser-Akner’s magpie style, layering a hum of worry with dialogue and voice-mails and scenes from mobile-phone games, has a singsongy appeal, but it can be difficult to sustain such a high-strung voice over nearly 500 pages.
There’s a lip-smacking relish to the way Brodesser-Akner delivers devastation on her luckless characters, and the slow, inevitable flow of failure, where the character can only watch but is powerless to stop it ... his is not fiction that is efficient and controlled, containing only what’s necessary. It’s too much at times – do we need a diversion every time a new character appears? – but sometimes too much is just right.
Heartbreaking and hilarious ... This book is a must-read for those who like witty, observational novels, family sagas, and sharp dialogue and characterization.