"Lush. . . . At once dark and profound. . . . [The Illumination] never fails to be deeply felt and precisely observed." --The New York Times Book Review

"A beautiful novel. . . . Brockmeier is a dazzling stylist." --The Washington Post Book World

"Stunningly original . . . this gorgeously written book will still stay with [readers] long after the last page is turned." --The Oregonian

"Show[s] us the astonishment of life as it is really being lived." --The Boston Globe

"Moving. . . . Skillfully explores the relationship between love and memory." --The New Yorker

"The depth of [Brockmeier's] scrutiny makes his fiction glow." --The Plain Dealer

"Brockmeier's characters are wonderful, and his images are dazzling." --Detroit Free Press

"The Illumination imagines a real universe of pain and pleasure, connection and disconnection, and quest for meaning that defines human experience delightfully anew." --The Miami Herald

"Brockmeier's consistently arresting observations have the throb of lived--rather than merely imagined--experience. . . . In The Illumination it isn't our agonies and discomforts that define us, but the selves we build in response to them." --Salon

"Brockmeier's work has always been characterized by his crystalline and surprising descriptions. . . . Brilliant. . . . Thorough and honest." --Southern Literary Review

"Lyrical. . . . Both the quotidian warmth of the notebook and the increasingly incidental shimmer of physical suffering draw the characters--and us--into the complex and vivid consideration of some of the fundamental questions that come with being human." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"[A] sunlit novel." --Time Out Chicago

"Fresh and ingenious. . . . Brockmeier has one of those imaginations that churns out picture-perfect imagery." --Elle

"Brockmeier's book positively sparkles . . . We've never read anything like it." --Daily Candy San Francisco