Grim, engrossing ... Isn’t explicitly political, but the book’s themes are attuned to a time when our social fractures seem persistent and irreparable ... It’s a novel unromantically but diligently looking for hope — some good luck — in a broken home and a broken nation.
It is not a book for those weary of attempts to cast the monsters among us as merely misunderstood ... The characters are predictable until they are not, the plot boring until we can barely keep up, as Rapp delivers a narrative that, even at its most shocking, is all too realistic ... This novel gets dark fast.
Rapp explores the darkest impulses of the American psyche in his decade-spanning novel ... Rapp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who has a gift for contained set pieces and fluid, believable dialogue; these talents help to smooth out the infelicities in this somewhat lumpy novel.
