[A] stunning new novel ... Soli’s novel is both gut-wrenchingly violent and heart-wrenching, but above all, it’s an unforgettable journey of loss and hope.
The Removes, a new novel by Tatjana Soli, promises so much ... The resulting novel is sadly stilted. Soli, who has written three novels, employs an awkward prose style in “The Removes,” a stark departure from the voices in her earlier work. Her sentences borrow constructions from the time period she’s writing about, but they work oddly, as though she’s trying on shoes that are a bit too small ... the novel doesn’t quite stand on its own ... It seems fair to ask: On the heels of centuries of overwrought racist captivity narratives, why center a large part of a novel on a white woman taken captive and raped repeatedly? ... in the end, it was the prose more than the politics that felt like a disappointment.
Soli’s fourth novel is an epic, enthralling look at the American West in the mid-1800s... With visceral, vibrant language, Soli paints a stark portrait of the violence, hardship, and struggles that characterized the American West.
Soli unleashes a thrilling novel set in the violent Wild West ... The clash of cultures is Soli’s grand theme, and here she drives home her message that the winners are no more worthy than the losers, and that 'not even brotherhood was enough to safeguard people who had what others coveted.'
Soli’s writing is unsentimental about life in captivity ... A sober and memorable take on the American West: its opportunities for men to wage war against each other and the land and the devastation the men’s ambition wrought upon women’s lives.
