"Larson softens the divisions separating genres by interweaving memoir, travelogue and screenplay. . . . a cleverly aberrant narrative structure dealing with the creative process and the difficult search for meaning." --Andru Okun, Star Tribune

"The pleasure of reading this essay is in the search, and in Larson"s precise, clear-eyed prose. . . . an enthralling read that is ultimately about how to make art out of the raw fuel of experience." --Kat Solomon, Chicago Review of Books

"A captivating blend of memoir, true-crime, meditation on women in film, and fantasy. . . . Larson captures both the fanaticism of creative fixation and the listlessness of artistic existential dread with clarity and empathy." --Lucy Shapiro, Arkansas International

"A moving and powerful elegy about brave women who go in search of an unknown something. A story of obsessions, passions, and delusions. A splendidly melancholy book about the literature in filmmaking and the filmmaking in literature." --Jazmina Barrera

"I have no idea what the hell this book is--in the best way--except that it's obsessive and dazzling as it spawns and splits fictions and nonfictions. Expect to be dizzied. Reel Bay vibrates with strangeness." --Ander Monson

"Reel Bay is an obsessive, fascinating, haunting debut; it is a kind of essay-film constructed out of gorgeous prose. Jana Larson reveals/revises the tensions between art and life, between fiction and fact, and between author and subject." --Dana Spiotta