“…I loved the spareness. There were so many points in the book where I read a deceptively simple sentence (or a few sentences) that said so much and I can’t tell you how much I love that—how much I appreciate that, as a reader. Some were dryly comic: ‘Richard doesn’t answer certain kinds of questions.’ This says so much more, yes? Finally, I have to say that the ending hit me like a freight train…I cannot really describe how unexpected, how emotional that was for me—what hope it gave me for both Del’s and Mark’s stories.”

“It was actually physically hard to read! What I mean by that is that with your descriptions and oh so real conversations and inner thoughts, you brought back old worries, innard-clenchings — really this book is very strong for anybody who’s ever sat in any kind of circle and ‘worked on’ the things that are really bothering them.”

“I’m reading your book for the second time, less emotionally. It is really beautiful. And of course sad and has been inspiring some healthy time doing the ‘Oprah thing’ with my mother—which is not something we do without a big push!”

“sometimes i see life transformed into art as exploitive and sometimes i see it as paying homage — how when writing fiction you can enter any moment held in your memory and it opens like a room which can be described forever — it gives a three-dimensionality to what seemed like just linear time flying by. –your minute, delicate observations, the care you take in construction, in getting the right sounds and rhythms, in hitting the right tone. that care is almost religious to me, a kind of moral approach an earnest writer takes toward using life and working it into their art. i can often sense when a writer doesn’t have that sensibility — the characters, the place, even life itself seems cheapened.”