“50 pages of the best prose you’ll read.”
-Bob Helfst for Shine a Little Light
“I wouldn’t mind being a little bit more like Edan Lepucki.”
-Kylee Stoor for Book Slut
“Lepucki has put on the page the narratives of two hugely memorable women who know exactly who they are but wonder, with motherhood looming, if they can continue to embrace their flaws when doing so might mean passing such flaws down to their children. But with enormous personalities and unavoidable quirks, it seems unlikely that Joellyn and Margaret could be anything but themselves. As readers, we can forgive them for that. We are just grateful to be with them to laugh at the humor they use to diffuse their anxiety.”
-NewPages
“If Edan Lepucki wrote an essay about the phone book, I would probably read it.”
-Alex Shephard interviews me for Full Stop
“It’s often funny, sometimes sad, and wrenchingly awkward when it needs to be — all qualities of a fine debut.”
-Tobias Carroll for Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“The book—about a woman named Joellyn telling her unborn daughter the story about the relationship that led to her pregnancy—is a smart, sassy little novella…”
-Yennie Cheung for The Hipster Book Club’s 2010 Holiday Gift Guide
“Lepucki does not attempt, in this novella that reads quicker than many short stories, to stretch Joellyn beyond her limits, to sacrifice the character for the sake of a lesson, a novel, or a heartwarming conclusion. Instead, Lepucki sets herself to the more difficult task of creating charm from Joellyn’s abrasiveness.”
-Eric Jett for Full Stop.
“This is a girl who requires an arena for combat. It seems to me she’d have been a natural at roller derby, but she turns instead to the dating world. When she meets Zachary in a coffee shop—“bland, invisible in the way certain men in their thirties are”—she pursues him more or less for sport. The consequences, depending on how you look at the matter, are either lucky or disastrous. It’s a sharp, accomplished work.”
-Emily St. John Mandel for The Millions