...[a] richly layered collection ... Alcott evokes the confusing intensity of teenage friendship, a closeness bordering on the erotic ... Alcott’s prose, both sensuous and cerebral, abounds with insight into people and the shapes life contorts them into.
Kathleen Alcott is the author of three novels distinguished by beautiful if sometimes gauzy prose. But her new story collection Emergency signals a remarkable stylistic sea change ... Gone are all traces of prettiness, replaced by sentences of startling aphoristic strength ... Impressive.
Permeated by a sense of disaster ... [A] striking title story ... Alcott’s sentences are tightly constructed and indelible ... As the best fiction does, Emergency refuses to offer simple diagnoses for today’s social and personal conditions ... This is a book you must wade into, slowly immersing yourself in its murky and unsettling world.
