Who Wrote the Book Of Love? Critical Praise "...quietly devastating...The people in his stories stay with you, and in fact you begin to run into them everywhere you go."
"These tender, tough, lyrical stories provide us with an anatomy of modern American love...To read this book is to re-experience the compromises of love and love's broken dreams. It is also to be shot headlong and precipitately in to dazzling vistas of love's renewing possibilities."
"...Farber's magic elevates us, too, with pathos and humor...(his) style has an enduring delicacy. The stories are spare, perceptive, and of undeniable value. "
"...an astonishing level of artistic maturity...finely perceived short stories...brilliant cameos in which it is all too easy to see ourselves."
"...the series of brief sketches hits a nerve...a crafty writer "
"I don't think any writer has captured so many moods of love in such a beautiful and straightforward way in a long time. The stories resonate with half-heard prayers...a masterful book. "
"...simply the best book I've read in years on the relationships of men and women. Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman recently claimed that there are no good male authors writing about feelings. Farber does it...and does it brilliantly...One of the great questions posed by the 1960s was whether the street people and the college age radicals would learn to love better than their parents...Farber provides more profound and shattering reflections on this question than I'd have ever imagined possible."
"What a great pleasure to encounter a writer of (Farber's) rare quality. He avoids ornamentation. He does not posture. He is so clear about his intention he needs no intimidating tricks of tone...Farber's voice is without irony or disgust. It even seems at times a ruthless honesty, but out of it comes a marvelous, unforced compassion, and that is the true mastery of point of view."
"Highly original and interesting."
"...a young author of remarkable perception and insight. The magnitude and beauty is dazzling...These stories are straight from the American heart and Thomas Farber has his fingers on the pulse."
"...spare delineations of everyday people confronting love in its many forms. Farber draws these people deftly, with sympathy but without idealization, intently analyzing the essentials of love..It is a fine multifaceted work, about the many aspects of love, its ecstasies as well as its banalities, its delight and its power."
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