Review "Wilson is a remarkable writer...One of his greatest strengths is the ability to craft an everyday family drama and inject it with one odd element that turns the story on its head. He's done it again here, writing once more about family but with some most unusual children and a particularly charming narrator." - Kirkus Reviews"Wilson turns a bizarre premise into a beguiling novel about unexpected motherhood…Wilson captures the wrenching emotions of caring for children in this exceptional, and exceptionally hilarious, novel." - Publishers Weekly"The novel is a love letter to the weirdness and difficulties of children and parenting...[a] story of a family that is as delightfully bizarre as it is heartfelt and true." - Library Journal"Slighter in scale than Wilson's previous novels, this one is powered, like his strange and funny short stories, by an element of fantasy. Lillian tells the story, revealing immediately that she's another of Wilson's normal extraordinary protagonists..She fills the book with her wry humour and large, embracing heart as she ponders the love of friendship and the love of family and then acts on what she discovers." - Booklist"His most outlandish - and curiously affecting - premise yet." - Entertainment Weekly"Weird, funny, but also unexpectedly moving… An affecting reflection on the blithe cruelty of the rich and what it means to be a good parent." - BuzzFeed"Inventive... The bonds [Lillian] forms with the children inform her of the costs of abandonment and durability of love." - Time"Quirky and insightful, strange and delightful." - -- PopSugar'Good Lord, I can't believe how good this book is... It's wholly original. It's also perfect... Wilson writes with such a light touch that it seems fairly impossible for the book to have a big emotional payoff. But there is, and that's the brilliance of the novel - that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn't see coming. You're laughing so hard you don't even realize that you've suddenly caught fire.' --- New York Times'Wilson's observational humor is riotous in its specificity, his descriptions as generous as fistfuls of Halloween candy at the best house on the block.'-USA Today'Wilson understands the mixture of affection and embarrassment that runs through all loving families. His satire is always marbled with tenderness...[this is] his most perfect novel. Paradoxically light and melancholy, it hews to the border of fantasy but stays in the land of realism.'-Washington Post'[A] deadpan, hilarious modern fairy tale complete with impoverished heroine, cruel princess and neglected children with magical powers... You'll close the covers with a smile.' --- Newsday About the Author Kevin Wilson is the author of the collections Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine, as well as two novels: The Family Fang and Perfect Little World. He lives with his family in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he is an associate professor in the English department at the University of the South.
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