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Outstanding
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Booklist Donna Seaman
Kindred spirit to Stanley Elkin, William Gaddis, and Paul Auster, Whitehead archly explicates the philosophy of excess and the poetics of ludicrousness, and he incisively assesses the power inherent in the act of naming. [1 Jan 2006, p.64]
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Outstanding
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Boston Globe Saul Austerlitz
Wickedly funny... Whitehead is making a strong case for a new name of his own: that of the best of the new generation of American novelists.
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
While making no attempt at depth of characterization, Whitehead audaciously blurs the line between social realism and fabulist satire. [1 Jan 2006, p.15]
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Favorable
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Library Journal Bette-Lee Fox
In spare and evocative prose, Whitehead does Shakespeare one better: What's in a name, and how does our identity relate to our own sense of who we are? [1 Jan 2006, p.106]
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
Apex Hides the Hurt... may not mark the apex of Colson Whitehead's career, but it brims with the author's spiky humor and intelligence.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Beth Kephart
Whitehead is not just as brilliant a guide to our culture as any Malcolm Gladwell ("The Tipping Point") or David Brooks ("On Paradise Drive"), he is also wickedly funny. [2 Apr 2006]
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Darryl Wellington
It's Whitehead's best-plotted novel to date. Whereas his first two novels sprawled, this time around Whitehead's love of language, which was always apparent, services the story.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review David Gates
The parodically conventional mystery provides the novel's forward motion, but -- and here's the paradox -- what keeps you reading this critique of language is its language, and our perverse delight in the ingenious abuse of words.
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Favorable
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USA Today Bob Minzesheimer
No novelist writing today is more engaging and entertaining when it comes to questions of race, class and commercial culture than Colson Whitehead.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Mark Swartz
Attractively titled and sleekly packaged, this is a book best read in two or three sittings, by the same logic ordaining that a Band-Aid should be pulled off all at once.
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Favorable
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Houston Chronicle Andrew Guy Jr.
Whitehead has crafted a focused social satire with a strong bite of racial reconciliation, but the secondary characters seem hollow.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
Trenchantly funny.
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Keith Phipps
Whitehead keeps his prose as streamlined as it comes, and he uses it to craft a satiric novel in tune with a moment where marketing overshadows content and even the lowliest blogger thinks in branding terms.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Gideon Lewis-Kraus
It's tempting to regard this new novel as a minor and predictable allegory. The book, however, deserves a better reading than that.
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Favorable
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Sydney Morning Herald Michael McGirr
A book of abundant irony.
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Erin Aubry Kaplan
Too often, he can't resist the temptation of irony, and his big ideas are sometimes overwhelmed by one wink-wink or metaphor too many.
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Mixed
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PopMatters Scott Esposito
It is no surprise that Apex Hides the Hurt, Whitehead's third novel, is packed with a number of allegorical elements blended into a multi-layered structure. What's unfortunate, however, is that all this technical artistry is in the service of unremarkable themes and ideas.
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Mixed
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San Francisco Chronicle Michelle Orange
It's pure joy to read writing like this, but watching Whitehead sketch out a minor character's essence with one stroke, while breathtaking, makes one wish the same treatment was afforded the people who ostensibly inhabit the novel's complex ideas.
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Unfavorable
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New York Observer Anna Shapiro
Readers not looking for direct emotional access to the characters may find it gratifying to solve the intellectual puzzle set here by Colson Whitehead. [27 Mar 2006]
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Unfavorable
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Publishers Weekly
Whitehead disappoints in this intriguingly conceived but static tale of a small town with an identity crisis. [30 Jan 2006, p.40]
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