Praise
"Ms. Martin's trademarks: a preoccupation with the dark underside of life, a taste for disturbing, even macabre imagery . . . excursions into an unseen realm [of] strange and magical events . . . Martin possesses a sure storytelling gift, [an] ability to transform a myriad of specific details into larger, symbolic shapes."
—The New York Times
"Little mad obsessions encased in precise prose make stories so startling you can't let go. Martin drags the psyche out of the dark cellars and closets into daylight. What happens is unsettling and weirdly beautiful in masochistic ways, like a gingerbread house with built-in gas ovens. Emotionally painful, iconoclastic, brilliant."
—Booklist
"Valerie Martin is one of those rare writers who understands the loss of traditional motives and order, but in her work never yields to the jumbled directionless excesses that tempt the modern fictioneer. Her stories are tight, bound with a tension that is as delicate as it is strong. And they are disturbing, unequivocal – a voice that will stay with you for a long time."
—Small Press Book Club
"Few have written so surprisingly, so convincingly, as Valerie Martin about sexual obsession. . . . Prime reading!"
—Margaret Atwood
"Valerie Martin is fascinating, tantalizing . . . contemporary and extraordinary." –Boston Globe
"Remarkable."
—Walker Percy