"This is a tale in which pathos tips into pathology and violence, answered by a penance of self-mutilation and suffering. Yet the prose is absolutely brilliant, sentence by sentence, simile by simile, and so relentlessly inventive it feels comic." –Marilynne Robinson, New York Times Book Review
"No other major American writer of our century has constructed a fictional world so energetically and forthrightly charged by religious investigation." –
Brad Leithauser, The New Yorker "I was more impressed by
Wise Blood than any novel I have read for a long time. Her picture of the world is literally terrifying. Kafka is almost the only one of our contemporaries who has achieved such effects. I have tremendous admiration for the work of this young writer." –
Caroline Gordon