from Katha Pollitt and Marjorie Williams' discussion at Slate: "It is one of the greatest novels about childhood I have ever read. Actually, it is one of the greatest novels I have ever read -- it should be just as well-known as Ulysses or To the Lighthouse as a classic of twentieth-century literature in English. It is overwhelming, extravagant, glittering, bitter, and furious. Stead applies a gimlet eye to everything, from the beauties of the Maryland shore to the precise emotional flow of every single interaction of a household tearing its members apart."