Reviews

Quotes

Merrilll Joan Gerber’s work is distinguished by the precision of its insights and the elegance of her deceptively forthright style. No one is better at rendering the complications and frustrations of ordinary lives. Her touch is light but her work is powerful –- Robert Stone

Merrill is above all and underneath all a crucially honest writer. She is one of those writers who discover us to ourselves and move us almost more than we can bear. Gerber is one of the masters. –- Cynthia Ozick

Merrill Joan Gerber is a young woman of extraordinary talent. She has the gift of making fiction out of the most everyday matters – family relations, babies, mothers-in-law, house-hunting, jobs. And every story she writes has a remarkable ring of truth. Her people live – and that is the rarest thing of all – because she is not in a solo performance to show off her virtuosity, but in a job of interested and often I’m used observation, to reveal them.Stop Here, My Friend is the first book of a real short story writer.—Wallace Stegner

Gerber’s work should win a wide and grateful audience. Gerber is a virtuoso who can startle and soothe, amuse and terrify. In the very special ambience of her accomplished stories, daily life is infused with the sinister, even the macabre. Her formidable gift of blending existential dread and dry wit makes the reader shiver, smile, glance warily over her shoulder and, most of all, eagerly read on. –- Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Greater eloquence ambivalence and compassion then I would have thought possible – Gerber has an exquisite ability to communicate sensual feeling. She also has an impressive way of moving a story along.—Susan Brownmiller

There’s so little real-life fiction about women and families on today’s bestseller lists, yet there are plenty of readers, like me, who are hungry for Gerber’s witty compassionate storytelling. She’s one of the best! –- Judy Blume

Most of these stories are told in the voice of a woman sometimes young, sometimes older, but always vividly drawn. The narrative unfolds crisply, hurling us from one situation to another to arrive at a gratifying conclusion I really didn’t want this book to end. –- Maxine Kumin

These stories, that seem at first to be reports from the warm center of familiar life, startle us with their cool refractive glimpses of our secret selves.– Frederick Busch

Merrill John Gerber follows her characters in with a passion for truth, a wonderful intelligence, a genius for detail, and a loving heart. Her invention is rich, eccentric, grim, and sweet. — Mary Ann Taylor –Hall

Gerber’s stories delight me with their always perfect pitch, their stringent wit, and above all their intense emotional realism. — Helen Norris

Gerber’s stories are full of antic, bittersweet, detail. – KirkusReviews .

In The Kingdom of Brooklyn, Gerber aptly conveys the visceral travail of her young heroine. Her purity of style packs psychological dynamite. — Publishers weekly

Miss Gerber’s supple prose takes us right inside her characters minds – sometimes funny sometimes frightening always absorbing and believable. — New York Times Book Review

Gerber’s language is sharp and clear, with beautifully delineated characters, finely detailed relationships told with honesty, humor and sympathy. – Library Journal

Forthright, skilled and sure. – Kirkus reviews

Merrill John Gerber is as relentless in observing the symptoms of the spirit as a doctor must be in observing the symptoms of the body. — Saturday Review

Merrill Joan Gerber has the heart to see out of other peoples’ eyes and the art to tell about it so that you see, too. Please, just read it! — New York Herald Tribune

Gerber communicates evenhanded compassion with the relentless pacing of a real-life horror story. The overall effect is not unlike a Stephen King novel written by Ann Tyler –- Washington Post