A Literary Hub and Vol. 1 Brooklyn Recommended "Book to Read in May" "One of the most celebrated writers in contemporary Brazilian literature."
– Guernica magazine "Vigor, pace, immediacy – while remaining capable of effortlessly exceeding its boundaries at any time. . . . a masterwork of compression whose lid we open at our peril."
– Dustin Illingworth, 3: AM Magazine "As much as the novel deserves its comparisons with the work of some of the modernist giants,
Quiet Creature on the Corner . . . shows Noll blazing past them into his own territory with a story for a different age."
– Cultured Vultures "A spare and modestly surreal tale of a young man who surrenders himself to a life that is inexplicably handed to him. . . . Newly released from Two Lines Press, in a measured, wonderfully restrained translation by Adam Morris, this novel offers an English language audience an absorbing introduction to this esteemed Brazilian author."
– Numéro Cinq "As urgently relevant as any contemporary novel. . . .
Quiet Creature on the Corner augurs a notable English-language career for João Gilberto Noll."
– Chicago Review of Books "Readers will be delighted that his 1991 mid-career work has now been translated into English."
– Publishers Weekly "Meeting the unforgettable narrator of João Gilberto Noll's
Quiet Creature on the Corner felt like finding that the narrator of Camus's
The Stranger had suddenly learned new and darker lessons in desire from a film by Nicolas Winding Refn or Gaspar Noé, on his way to star in a Beckett play or one of J.G. Ballard's oddest stories. His is a captivating voice, the perfect guide to lure you into Noll's uniquely alien world, where the intuitive logic of the folk tale is expertly welded to anxieties both personal and political."
– Matt Bell, author of Scrapper "A wonderfully dislocated read,
Quiet Creature on the Corner shimmers through the consciousness of a wounded, and wounding, man who experiences the sharpest impacts of himself with the world and is able to hang on to very little else, including the passage of time. It's like what might have happened if Werner Herzog had written a hypnotized sequel to Peter Handke's
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick."
– Brian Evenson, author of Fugue State and A Collapse of Horses "Noll's literature doesn't seek to impart a lesson or demonstrate anything. Above all, it shows the poetry in the fact that no one individual is a permanence but rather many simultaneous things."
– Sergio Chejfec, author of My Two Worlds Without a doubt, João Gilberto Noll holds a special place in the pantheon of contemporary Brazilian authors."
– Amálgama "Without any plan, motivated only by curiosity and the compulsion to keep writing. This is how . . . João Gilberto Noll gives life to his books, always curious to find out how a solution might 'emerge.'"
– O Globo
