"Bernhard's prose is hypnotic, unstoppable, as rapid as thought itself. He makes you think, as all great writers do, that at any moment he can say anything."
--The Washington Post Book World
"A masterfully dense set of esthetic, social and political metaphors about contemporary life, about art, about obsessive commitment to anything. . . . The book is a jungle of meaning, the opposite of simplistic allegory, and a major achievement."
--The New Republic
"A novel that forces you to think, that compels you to measure your life and rituals against those of its strange, though frequently all-too-human, protagonist."
--National Review