Stabs at Happiness (26 page)

“Lisa Nova's profound, even pathological detachment means she can act and react impulsively, over and over again, with no real sense of remorse. Yet her own compulsions and rationales are so meticulously evoked that the reader is hopelessly seduced into following her. If it were possible to genetically engineer the ideal femme fatale, you'd end up with Lisa Nova—and god help anyone, male or female, who gets into a car with her.” —Elizabeth Hand (for
Fantasy & Science Fiction
)

Within Normal Limits…

“The world of WITHIN NORMAL LIMITS is at the same time bleak and exciting, a world of medical and moral emergency that desensitizes even as it relentlessly ups the emotional ante, causing us to doubt the truth of St. Thomas More's that the times are never so bad but that a good man can't live in them.”

—Richard Russo, author of EMPIRE FALLS