Praise for TRANCE
"Like Don DeLillo in "Libra "and Philip Roth in "American Pastoral," Christopher Sorrentino has opened the pages of his fiction to the breadth of collective memory, and the result is one of the most humane and haunting novels I've read in years...Sorrentino possesses a searing gaze, a polymath's erudition, and a lover's ear for the frailities of human language."
Jonathan Lethem
""Trance "is a work of startling insight, marvelously and masterfully evoking the grim stuff of true American nightmares."
Colson Whitehead
"Playful, scathing, gripping, and profound, this book is a meditation and a provocation, full of humor and menace. Sorrentino has broken new ground at the border of fiction and history."
Sam Lipsyte
"An ambitious, intelligent, and kaleidoscopically opulent book, remarkably evocative of the textures and tones of the seventies. Sorrentino has a talent for creating authentic, microscopic moments that capture the spirit of the era."
Lydia Millet
"This sprawling work is so ambitious and irreverent that it doesn't fit easily into any genre...Full of descriptions sublime in their precision..."Trance "is a pleasure ot read – delightful and often funny."
" Los Angeles Times"
"[Sorrentino] remains a virtuoso, and much of the success of this book is due to his writing skill...[He] is an insightful, sensitive writer who makes you believe you're seeing what he's describing."
Harvey Pekar, "The Baltimore Sun"
"Big and ambitious...Its method and scope are breathtaking."
" Salon.com"
"Sorrentino has something of Don DeLillo's ear for American white noise – for the hiss and crackle that fills the country's derelict spaces."
" New York Times Book Review"
"Echoes of Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Hunter S. Thompson..."Trance "lives up to its title – it's a brilliant, hallucinatory fever dream of Americana, one that we have yet to wake up from."
" Seattle Weekly"
"A full-blooded lampoon...hilarious, satiric..."Trance"'s charming gift, among others, is respect for the reader's acuity in deciding whether it was a pretty picture. Or not."
" San Francisco Chronicle"
"One of the year's most surprising works of fiction...amazing...context vibrates out of the sentences, rather than being foisted on the action from above...It takes novels like this one to bring us back to the moment, to return our icons to us as flesh and blood, almost."
John Freeman, "The Boston Globe"
"Sorrentino's vision here is kaleidoscopic, eliding fluidly from individual to individual, taking on a wide array of points of view."
David L. Ulin, "Newsday"
"Transcendent...By using the skeleton of what is known to portray people whose minds no one will ever truly understand, Sorrentino gives us a new understanding of our past and future, and a fresh way to consider the ideological movement that can appear so confident in their control or resistance."
" Minneapolis Star-Tribune"
""Trance "is a tour-de-force, announcing a mature and ambitious talent."
" Publishers Weekly"
"[A] masterfully omniscent and suspenseful novel. Braiding history with invention, devilish humor with psychological veracity, telling detail with a big-picture perspective, bursts of rapid dialogue with gorgeous description and arresting inner monologues, Sorrentino satirizes with a light yet penetrating touch."
Donna Seaman, "Booklist "(starred review)
"A demanding, raw, and fascinating epic."
" Details"
"Even more than DeLillo's "Libra "and Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel," "Trance "works to strip the 'event' of its historical cover, to not only humanize it but reduce it to the mundane and everyday..."Trance "doggedly dismantles the pedestal of celebrity and myth."
" The Village Voice"
"A skeptical, occasionally corrosive perspective...Sorrentino's writing is smart and vibrant, slangy when necessary, and always appropriately allusive. Jammed with acute observations and a good deal of humor."
" The Times Literary Supplement "(London)
"Substantial...Cleverly reinvents this story with a handsome helping of historical and contemporary satire."
" The Times "(London)
"A tour de force..."Trance "is a bravura epic that unfolds cinematically yet with linguistic brilliance...Tackles unfolding events from a multiplicity of perspectives with intelligence, insight, and a darkly comic flair."
Tina Jackson, "Metro "(London)
"A powerful satire of American myth-making and of the hidden forces that work against our attempts to discover a true history."
John Burnside, "The Scotsman "(UK)
"Particularly impressive is Sorrentino's protean writing...the comprehensive arc of humanity astounds. "Trance "is an epic, epoch-defining achievement, up there with the finest works by Don DeLillo."
" The Sunday Telegraph "(London)
"Magnificent...funnier than anything so serious has a right to be. Sorrentino hits the key notes of the era perfectly...Sorrentino's solid-gold satire, a contender for Great American Novel status, is wise to both the honor and hypocrisy of middle-class militants. Scathing and sensitive, "Trance "will make you its willing captive."
" Uncut"
"Sorrentino is a wickedly talented writer...His sense of humor is as sharp as it is savage...A work where unmitigated brilliance and staggering prose is interlaced."
" Rain Taxi"
"Christopher Sorrentino gives us "Trance, "a beautifully successful – indeed, heroic – attempt to restore to us what is surely one of the great American folk stories of the twentieth century. "Trance "is a full-blown opera – an epic documentary fiction, a post-Coover "In Cold Blood"–presenting a harmony of hundreds of points of view."
" The Review of Contemporary Fiction"
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Praise for SOUND ON SOUND
Sorrentino has used the rock book format (and his superbly pompous multitrack device) as a vehicle for a brilliant and complex novel about remembered truths and modern ennui...gasps of bright poetry...eloquent prose.
Patrick Barber, "Los Angeles Reader"
...reading rock n roll has never been a particularly rewarding experience...but by handling submediocre musicians with cynical wit and an inventive kind of non-storytelling–and by being admirably unmindful of SPINAL TAP–Sorrentino gives the rock novel some hope.
Marc Weidenbaum, "PULSE!"
Flawlessly executed...sheer virtuosity...funny, perceptive and dead-on the satirical mark.
" Publishers Weekly"
"As a sardonic condemnation of the bloated egos of rock 'n' roll, it's a ten-minute drum solo with flaming cymbals."
" LIT" (Chicago)
Sound On Sound gives the impression that its main concerns are satiric and metafictional, yet (paradoxically perhaps) it takes it material seriously. In his way, Sorrentino honours rock'n'roll...Sorrentino's kind of literary subversion also makes indirect contact with serious social and political issues. Themes of homophobia, mental illness, and junk culture are not silenced by Sorrentino's mass of irreverent white noise.
Doug Harkness, "VOX" (Calgary, Alberta)
Writers like Christopher Sorrentino bring us back to the pleasures of reading. And there is a lot of intelligent material to chew on here. This book works like a hypertext; the chapters can be read in any order. So in that way it's totally contemporary while continuing to converse with Modernism."
Alexander Laurence, "American Book Review""
