Reviews
“An endearing history of ex-urban American life that consistently evokes Mark Twain, James Thurber, and their kindred. The result is a compact comic Decameron, a deadpan fantasia . . . a minor masterpiece: one of the most delightful novels of the decade.” Kirkus Reviews
“Is there a more beguiling writer today than Eric Kraft? In his latest comic novel, he manages to combine two of his work’s hitherto disparate modes—the pastoral (à la Wodehouse) and the black humor that runs like a stain through American literature from Melville to Nathanael West—to hilarious effect. . . . With his customary elegance, Kraft has written a coda to the utopian impulses that lurk in the heart of our century; this novel will please both fans and readers new to the small, welcoming hotel of the Peter Leroy books.” Publishers Weekly
“Leaving Small’s Hotel is edgier than most of Kraft’s work. . . . The book is imaginative, clever, and convoluted, offering a twist in the road Kraft has been building to our collective past. Under the surface humor, Kraft’s take on the national experience is thoughtful, disturbing, and unlike that of any other American writer.” Anthony Brandt, Men’s Journal
“There is a delightful loopiness to the novels of Eric Kraft that no other writer today can emulate. It is a sly charm that makes us think his stories are a good deal simpler than they are. In fact, they are wonderfully complex, multi-layered and multileveled, as carefully painted as Japanese miniatures. . . . The belief has long been held here that Eric Kraft is one of our best writers, and Leaving Small’s Hotel reinforces it. . . . Not since James Thurber has anyone written so delightfully about the foibles of his childhood.” Roger Harris, Newark Star-Ledger
“Kraft offers a refreshingly complex and searching portrait of the writing life, as well as of a fundamentally strong and warm relationship between a husband and wife assailed by doubt and unhappiness. Leaving Small’s Hotel affirms once more that when the destination is Babbington (as Leroy’s version of Kraft concludes), ‘time spent in another place, in another life, is the perfect vacation, the ideal.’” Mahinder Kingra, City Paper (Baltimore)
“From a mid-life crisis of failed dreams and an uncertain future, Eric Kraft weaves a beguiling, affectionate comedy of love and possibilities.” Lynn Harnett, Portsmouth Herald
“Funny, deftly structured . . . warm, engaging . . . just right.” James Polk, The New York Times Book Review
“Kraft . . . has created a beguiling tale of hope, friendship, memories, and love. Recommended for all fiction collections.” Robin Nesbitt, Library Journal
“[Leaving Small’s Hotel] is vintage Leroy, or vintage Kraft, and . . . with Kraft’s typical skill, erudition and levity, it broaches the very nature of the human condition through its winning anecdotes of Leroy’s present, and of his remembered and embroidered past. . . . Kraft’s imagination, like Leroy’s, is endlessly fertile, not merely in its creations but in its connections, as well, so that each apparently innocent anecdote chimes with Kraft’s broader theme of the imagined life, of its thrilling, enhancing, and ultimately dangerous connection to the real. There is also much sorrow in Leaving Small’s Hotel, as its title suggests, and an uncomfortable acknowledgment of the potentially imprisoning consequences of imaginative escape. But the novel ends on a note of joyous possibility, offering both Leroy and his brilliant creator the freedom to create something new.” Claire Messud, Newsday
“Kraft’s tender story of Peter and Albertine—still in love after so many years—is funny, perceptive, highly readable, and peopled with a cast of characters as intriguing as they are unique. In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether this is Peter Leroy’s daydream or Eric Kraft’s; either way this novel is a dream come true.” Amazon.com
“A wonderful matryoshka of a novel, with at least five stories nested one inside the other . . . the various tales move toward contrasting climaxes with just the sort of spectacular intricacy that makes a business fail and a novel fly.” The New Yorker
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