Something like cultural rubble ... Erpenbeck’s deft, metaphorical ‘ostranenie’—the Russian formalists’ term for artistic ‘defamiliarization’—makes one think [further] ... If it at times seems slight or scattershot as a freestanding book, it slots nicely into an oeuvre that captures with startling lucidity a modernity characterized by unrest, upset, and dissolution.
Both peculiar and poetic ... Erpenbeck leaves it to her readers to assemble these enigmatic fragments into a meaningful whole. Those who indulge her idiosyncratic prose will be rewarded, finding in this slim book a wistful record of memory and loss.
