""Mr. Goyen has the poet's consideration for the exact word, and he has a great sense of laughter."" --New Yorker
|""[He] devotes his formidable gifts--his strength of imagery, his rhythmic sense, his glyptic phrasemaking, the intelligence that he showed in Ghost and Flesh and House of Breath--to making his message passionate, copious, and sibylline."" --New York Times Book Review
|"'There are simplicity and gentleness and trust and love in the book. Its people are children of God.' Events in the story grow not out of rationally plausible circumstance, but occur simply because the author, exercising the fiat of a fairy tale, waves his magic wand and bides them happen. All seem on the verge of vanishing momentarily if removed from the sustaining medium of Mr. Goyen's evocative prose style. That they do not vanish until the end, when the dream is broken, attests to the efficacy of that style and to the talent of a strangely gifted writer."
—Saturday Review
