Recently my publicist at Hard Case sent out copies of The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes to some friends of mine, mostly writers. “Larry thought you might like a look at his latest,” her note said, to make it clear that we weren’t looking for blurbs. I stopped giving blurbs fifteen or twenty years ago, at which time I decided it was highly inappropriate for me to seek what I was myself unwilling to supply.

I received this today by email, and perhaps you’ll understand why I’m unable to keep it to myself:

“Went through this in one breath. The last forty pages are among the most harrowing I have ever found in fiction. Can be put in the same place as the last fifty of Lolita or even The Last of the Just.

“Simply remarkable. And the brutal, graphic sexual catalogue fits, is wholly justified, is a catalogue of descent, nastily contrapuntal and terrifying.

“Ralph Vaughan Williams’ greatest symphony, probably the finest of the second half century, is his Ninth, which he finished in 1958 at 85. This novel gives me the same inspiration and hope.

“You can quote this anywhere.”

~Barry N.Malzberg