"Lush. . . . At once dark and profound. . . . ["The Illumination"] never fails to be deeply felt and precisely observed." --"The New York Times Book Review"
"A beautiful novel. . . . Brockmeier is a dazzling stylist." --"The Washington Post Book World"
"Stunningly original . . . this gorgeously written book will still stay with [readers] long after the last page is turned." --"The Oregonian"
"Show[s] us the astonishment of life as it is really being lived." --"The Boston Globe"
"Moving. . . . Skillfully explores the relationship between love and memory." --"The New Yorker"
"The depth of [Brockmeier's] scrutiny makes his fiction glow." --"The""Plain Dealer"
"Brockmeier's characters are wonderful, and his images are dazzling." --"Detroit Free Press"
""The Illumination" imagines a real universe of pain and pleasure, connection and disconnection, and quest for meaning that defines human experience delightfully anew." --"The Miami Herald"
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"Brockmeier's consistently arresting observations have the throb of lived--rather than merely imagined--experience. . . . In "The Illumination" it isn't our agonies and discomforts that define us, but the selves we build in response to them." --Salon
"Brockmeier's work has always been characterized by his crystalline and surprising descriptions. . . . Brilliant. . . . Thorough and honest." --"Southern Literary Review"
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"Lyrical. . . . Both the quotidian warmth of the notebook and the increasingly incidental shimmer of physical suffering draw the characters--and us--into the complex and vivid consideration of some of the fundamental questions that come with being human." --"The Times Literary Supplement "(London)
"[A] sunlit novel." --"Time Out Chicago"
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"Fresh and ingenious. . . . Brockmeier has one of those imaginations that churns out picture-perfect imagery." --"Elle"
"Brockmeier's book positively sparkles . . . We've never re