"This clever satire of writing programs exhibits, with persuasive bitterness, the damage wreaked by the idea that literature is competition." --The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

"Funny, cerebral . . . Ives's hyperbolic satire--her outsized, loquacious characters, her stylistic brio--lays bare the central fallacy of 'write what you know.' In one sense, we believe Ives is drawing from her own, all-too-real experience. And yet, with its ludic meta-fictionality and the self-conscious construction of characters, the novel cleverly dodges knowable reality, circumventing the question of authenticity altogether." --Hermione Hoby, The New Yorker

"Ives is either puncturing a myth about Iowa or advancing it; either option makes her book an indulgence . . . Ives's interests point toward the philosophical, even the mystical. Loudermilk is not just funny; it becomes a layered exploration of the creative process . . . Ives approaches the students themselves with canny tenderness, and their work (which the novel excerpts, delightfully) with grave respect. Her own language is prickly and odd, with a distracted quality, as if she were trying to narrate while another voice is murmuring in her ear." --Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

"A clever new satire of writing programs . . . Ives scores some fine touches." --Caleb Crain, The New York Times Book Review

"Hilarious . . . A riotous success. Equal parts campus novel, buddy comedy and meditation on art-making under late capitalism, the novel is a hugely funny portrait of an egomaniac and his nebbish best friend." --Rebekah Frumkin, The Washington Post

"A narrative in defense of narrative . . . In a literary critical flourish, [Ives] combines elements of libertine novels, realist novels, social novels, inherited wealth lit, postmodern novels, period pieces, poetry, satire, and revenge plots . . . A funny and cutting novel whose critiques of inherited wealth and its effects on culture in the aughts will keep being true until a full redistribution of wealth, beginning with reparations, occurs." --Charlie Markbreiter, The Nation

"A cutting, sparkling new novel from Lucy Ives . . . As Ives tells the story of Loudermilk and Harry, and the assorted people they encounter on campus, it becomes clear that she is telling the story of art, of self-invention, of libertines, of culture, of America. Needless to say, things get dark. And yet, it never gets so dark that you can't see what's right in front of you, in all of its tragic hilarity: the truth of what America is at its very worst and its very best--which, as it turns out, are pretty much the same thing." --Kristin Iversen, NYLON

"Ives' satirical masterpiece follows poet Troy Augustus Loudermilk, a shallow Adonis recently admitted to the nation's premiere creative-writing graduate program, located in the heart of America's starchy middle . . . Laugh-out-loud funny and rife with keen cultural observations, Ives' tale is a gloriously satisfying critique of education and creativity." --Booklist (starred review)

"The nuanced subversion of tropes and full-throttle self-indulgence of Ives's writing lend a manic glee to this slyly funny and deeply intelligent novel." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Half gonzo grad school satire featuring these two princes among men, half theoretical inquiry into the nature of writing and reality . . . Wonder Boys meets Cyrano de Bergerac meets Jacques Lacan meets Animal House. Something for everyone."--Kirkus Reviews