"One of the strongest, most intelligent, inventive, and moving novels of the last several years." –Vince Passaro, Elle
"Haunting yet hopeful . . . The novel continues the unsparing exploration of themes that run through all of Yamanaka's fiction as well as her poetry: family dysfunction, poverty, and ostracism." –
Michele Orecklin, Time "Raw and surreal . . . In
Father of the Four Passages, Yamanaka shows why she is one of the most controversial voices in Asian-American fiction–a writer who is not afraid to describe, often with brutal honesty, the lives of [the] disaffected and disconnected." –
Jeff Waggoner, The New York Times Book Review "This ostensibly depressing story becomes, in Yamanaka's hands, a scrappy, scathingly funny, openhearted tale of a pigheaded heroine who asks only for a glimmer of grace, and–once in a while, through dint of hard work–gets it." –
The New Yorker "Dense and haunting." –
The Sunday Oregonian "Moving . . . Readers should revel in [Yamanaka's] unsparing view of lowlife in contemporary Hawaii . . . You've got to give Yamanaka, and her characters, credit for their compulsion to go straight where no one wants to go, and fight their way back out." –
Mindy Pennybacker, The Nation "Harsher than ever in its unflinching depiction of stifled rage and twisted love, and charged with a fervid yet earthy mysticism, this is Yamanaka's most challenging work to date. Suffused with pathos, but never overwhelmed by sentiment, the novel settles itself deep into the rhythms and passions of its protagonists." –
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
