Accomplished ... The House of Broken Bricks is a tender and powerful novel, all the more profound for its apparent simplicity, and establishes Williams as an exciting and original new voice.
[Williams] uses first-person narration for everyone except Richard, whose story is told in the third person. This amplifies the sense of discord between him and Tess, which works well as a narrative device but makes it harder to connect with Richard ... Williams’s writing is richly atmospheric ... But she forgets you can have too much of a good thing, overdoing the figurative language.
The first third of the novel drags at times ... Richard is the novel’s weakest link, which is a shame because the end of the story hinges on his action. The resolution offered, while superficially heart-warming, feels a little mechanical; we never really see into his soul ... That said, this is an affecting debut from a talented new writer.
Williams balances sharp storytelling with empathetic emotional depth in the way she centralizes characters while maintaining the plot’s pace and impact. This is a tale that boldly reaffirms the particulars of each human being while capturing the universal struggles families go through in coping with doubt, dislocation, grief, and isolation.
Lyrical and haunting ... Williams skillfully juggles the perspectives of her four main characters to reveal their impressions of one another... and evoke the pastoral landscape.
