An elegant, compelling puzzle of family, memory and solitude that brings to life modern day Boston and postwar Russia through a profound love story. Graceful, moving and unexpected

A tender and moving debut novel

An impressive debut: intelligent, moving, and flitting easily between the artistic salons of Soviet Russia and the Boston of today

A memorable love story cleverly disguised as historical fiction

Part romance, part mystery, this elegant debut captures the danger - and refuge - of love in Stalin's era

Highly readable saga... for serious balletomanes.

He’s a novelist who has spent a lifetime creating his own subversive pantheon, a jumpy CBGB’s of the literary soul… Several of the essays here marinate in the fish sauce that is literary gossip… feisty, freewheeling, funny

The Ecstasy of Influence is, more than anything, a record of Mr. Lethem’s life as a public novelist, a role for which he is obviously well suited… Mr. Lethem has such a gift, and The Ecstasy of Influence is evidence of it

Lethem writes with a commitment to sharing his enthusiasm for whatever obsesses him ... While the results illuminate his formative influences and artistic development, they also cast considerable light on the culture at large, which is both reflected in Lethem's work and has profoundly shaped it

Jonathan Lethem...writes superb essays... lovely subtlety

Jonathan Lethem, the New York novelist, writes superb essays

Superb collection of essays… Clever but satisfying, too

A funny and clever selection of essays

Impassioned and detailed studies offset with bagatelles

Witty, astute and irreverent