"Full disclosure: I may have a little crush on Romm. Not because she’s a good writer, although her prose (both here and in The Mother Garden, her debut story collection, published in 2007) is so fresh and uncompromising it can feel practically impertinent. Nor because of her wit, although she can be startlingly funny (particularly on the subject of her nonagenarian grandfather). Not even because of her fearless, scathing honesty, like a gauntlet thrown down on page after page. It’s ultimately her anger that is so magnetic." "
—Leah Hager Cohen, New York Times Book Review (Front Cover)
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* Top Ten Nonfiction Books of the Year, Entertainment Weekly
* Notable Book of the Year, New York Times
* One of the Best Books of the Year, San Francisco Chronicle

"Despite their confident, straightforward prose and their crystalline surface gloss, which recall Ann Beattie's early slice-of-life stories, Romm's narratives -- call them slice-of-death -- turn out to revel in ambiguities and even a gentle magic....But Romm is a close-up magician, more intimate and less instinctively fabulist, and most of her work leaves room for rational interpretation. No magic here, Romm seems to insist. But of course there is, and it's the oldest kind we know: the ordinary incantation of words and stories to help us navigate the darkness and finally -- for all that this impressive collection protests otherwise -- to hold the end at bay."
— Gregory Cowles, New York Times Book Review
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