Ambitious but uneven and exhausting ... Hallberg is an intelligent writer, but he’s a wild and frequently sloppy one. His narratives don’t click into gear; his curveball only sometimes makes it over the plate ... There is little sense of momentum; the pages never turn themselves. It is so intensely written that it gave me a headache, as if I had been grinding my teeth. I was glad when it was over.
Overstuffed ... The real problem with this novel... is Hallberg’s relentless urge to digress, to lather moments with excess observations and observations with superfluous verbiage ... And for much of the book’s impressive length, the plot moves forward so slowly and with so little urgency that some of the more dispensable flashbacks struck me as almost vindictive ... Are there flashes of brilliance here? More than flashes; whole storms of genius. But my irritation is piqued by the fact that so many wonderful, witty, poignant sections are buried in this lumpy novel.
Hefty ... After hundreds of pages of caustic witticisms, I would have given anything for someone to speak like a real human being ... The novel is in part about the transformative journey these people take to finally arrive someplace honest. But there’s a lot of falseness to indulge before they get there.
A family epic with perhaps too many characters and storylines but also with a wonderful and troubled 13-year-old girl at the center of it ... A complex, moving, insanely passionate, frightening, and weirdly hopeful story ... Hallberg is a smart and talented writer who likes to take risks. This impulse plays out in a mixtape tactic of roving narrators that kind of, sort of, works, but was not perhaps necessary? ... The result for me was a core story with power, a million and one amazing details, and many pages I would have chosen to skip if I hadn’t been asked to review them. It’s a B+ from an A talent who got caught in the weeds, worth reading for the dazzling parts and the colossal effort behind this heartfelt but muddled endeavor.
Bloated if flickeringly brilliant ... Despite the muscular prose, there's flab on his story — a lot. He detours into sub-plots and technical tricks, braking his momentum, blurring our focus ... As the novel twists and turns toward an unsatisfying conclusion, Hallberg reverts to a soundtrack structure, preening his knowledge of indie rock as well as radio-friendly tunes. This formal device falters, but serves as a metaphor for a major talent hindered by self-indulgence.
The author’s spot-on wit remains playfully evident ... Still, readers have little chance to discern the social texture of 2011 while the characters are staring so deeply into themselves ... This is a book where the public and the political are constantly muffled in deference to the personal, the work of a virtuoso muralist forsaking murals for high-res miniatures.
Hallberg guides readers through every switchback and secret passage ... The trappings are complex, but at its core, this is a tale of the love that makes a family and how it does so.
Disappointing ... Hallberg enlivens this setup by playing with form, modeling sections after an old-school mixtape and shuffling perspectives, but his efforts to show how the parent-child bond both persists and disrupts feels stodgy ... Whip-smart and ambitious, but tangled in its own web of themes and scenarios.
Meandering ... The novel is awash with gritty details and gutting emotional insights, but there’s an overabundance of purple prose and the drawn-out payoff is only semirewarding. This doesn’t quite scale the heights of Hallberg’s breakout.
