Self-consciously baggy ... Amazons’s chapter-capping sex scenes are at once frank and endearingly chatty ... Feels refreshingly out of place in 2026. At times it recalls the ambitious, chonky, libidinous fiction of the era ... The freedom is thrilling, indeed out of control. Scenes go on too long, to our delight. Cleo, bless her, can’t stop. DeLillo has written his share of sturdy female characters, but never in the first person, and never so willingly.
An exercise in concentrated silliness ... There’s a steady thrum of bewilderment running through Birdwell’s narration—it’s clear-eyed and removed in a way that few of DeLillo’s narrators are.
The tone of Amazons is zanier, more absurd, untroubled by nuclear annihilation ... Not a lost masterpiece. Some scenes drag, like runaway SNL sketches. The dialogue, although generally hilarious, can take on a rim-shot quality.
