"As rendered through Ms. McDermott's rich, supple prose, and infused with her quiet, emotional wisdom, the story of these three children and their family assumes a kind of mythic resonance: it becomes a parable about all families and all families' encounters with love, mortality and sorrow." --The New York Times

"A brilliant, highly complex, extraordinary piece of fiction and a triumph for its author." --Chicago Tribune

"McDermott's novels can't be relegated to plot or thematic conceit. It is the sweep of her sentences, many of them as luxurious and sure of themselves as a cat stretching in the sun. And it is the remarkable microscopic attention to humanity--the private gestures and tell-tale routines that make us who we are." --The Boston Sunday Globe