Johnson succeeds so well as to make one eager for more -- John Sutherland * London Review of Books * A beautifully tragic chronicle * New York Magazine * Denis Johnson is one of our most inventive, unpredictable novelists * New York Times Book Review * Johnson knows his people inside out, their lost, lonely, never-had-a-chance lives. He knows how they talk and think, and he makes us know them too * Publishers Weekly * One of the strongest examples of fiction noir since Robert Stone's first work appeared-with an absence of sentimentality and an overall shape that's perfectly judged, this is one of the most impressive first novels of recent seasons - full of a fiery recoiling kick, the dreadful power of inhuman ugliness and misfortune beyond redemption * Kirkus Reviews *