Thorny and unforgiving. Avalon/Peter's flashbacks distract a compelling and immediate story with fantasy familiarities, but on the whole a driving read, a push to the dark parts of our best intentions. Unflinching awareness of the falseness of a good/bad dichotomy -- no one here is innocent. Amazing illustrations.

Not at all about a mystery, entirely about how choices layer upon each other to make a man. Reveals with a strange, spongy clarity human moments, photographs of human relationships, captured in a life, in a day, in a thought; reveals without untangling the strange spiderweb of a neighborhood's heart. A real exploration of complexity through extreme simplicity.

Everything you'd think I'd like -- strange, slip-streamy stories of people's ghosts made manifest -- but I couldn't get into this at all. The narratives seems to be pushing too hard, a fluttering of images, and lack the underlying clarity that makes the shimmering weirdness of Kelly Link's stories cohere.

Take every tired plot & character cliché of vampire hunter & biomedical thriller MOVIES, put them in 1 BOOK, PLUS clumsy writing? FANTASTIC.

97% British, 92% about how demoralizing/depressing book tour appearances are. Uneven & only occasionally engaging.

Fairytales of family. Chagall & theft & war & the mythology of being born. Horn makes some choices I'm not sure are entirely successful, but this novel is ripe & full with the author's love. A storyteller.

Oddly paced. Vague on details in an off-putting way that both exposed how truly uninformed the author was/is, and how inexact the "experiment." I was left thinking, as I hadn't before, that (though the end result was positive) the whole thing was an extremely ill-considered gimmick leapt into by a flighty, spoiled dilettante looking for a book deal.

A little stumbling stylistically early on, but undeniably compellingly told. I found the progression of events a bit predictable, but the tension is still palpable -- even as you watch the characters march towards their inevitable fate, exactly *how* that fate will come is a nail-biting unknown. A tough, taut read in which the author doesn't shy away from hard or painful truths.

A bit stiff & stuttering. A lack of primary materials means the narrative is too reliant on conjecture ("perhaps he" and "he may have") and there's not enough information available to tell an exciting, immediate story. Likewise, the novel is "filled out" with extraneous contextual information. A certain amount of historical context and details of the day is enlightening -- the heavy leaning on it here feels tangential.

Glad this was a free Scrollmotion download.

This writing is...not good. Constantly being tripped up by amateurish stumbles such as inclusion of irrelevant descriptive details in the midst of an otherwise briskly-moving paragraph.

The weakest of Sedaris's works I've read. One feels he is just re-treading water. I fear he may have become his own late-stage Woody Allen, endlessly plumbing his own quirks & neuroses until they bore even him.

Quiet, vaguely disorganized. One senses that there's meant to be a narrative arc in here somewhere, a theme -- but it never quite makes it out of the smallest whispers. Feels slight, wish it would have gone deeper. That one's family is famous does not particularly make one's family vacation home & minor household dramas there of any more interest.

Please don't make me read another Philippa Gregory book.

Sadly, I never found (cookie-cutter emogirl) Lulu half as fascinating as the narrator did, or find their relationship to be well-developed or compelling enough to drive an entire book. Or even a little red wagon. My entire reaction to this book was essentially: "that was okay." Not great, not good, not terrible -- just...okay.

Delicious, atmospheric little mystery. Surprisingly engaging for the supposedly tiny mystery within, and I actually found the additional plot-line and subsequent reveal a bit garish and tacked-on. Great little historical with the feel of an old Sherlock Holmes story that doesn't need the extra drama apparently added for spice. A ghost story without a ghost.

Reminded me of John Irving's quiet moments -- the delicate melancholy, the voice within. The Hamlet parallels are not at all subtly done, and I suspect I would have enjoyed the book more had they not been so unambiguous. There's something profoundly calming & "inner" about this book, so much so that the ending comes as a bit of a sharp shock, even knowing it's coming. Paced very slowly, very quietly, and yet I found it deeply compelling -- I hardly put it down for two days.

"She looked at her hands like a book in a foreign language."

"Forty-foot Indian Jesus comes rolling down the alleyway, careful not to step on the cars, garages, leaving footprints as big as fishing boats behind him. A little tipsy, a little trouble. A suddent attack of tenderness, a feeling welling up in his chest of loss and sorrow and love for the tiny people asleep in their tiny houses, snug in their beds with Jesus watching over them outside, trying not to crush the carport. My people, Jesus thinks, my little people."

"little messy bird's nest of a face."