Many works have been compared to that of Shirley Jackson, this might be the only one that really lives up to the comparison. Barker, like Jackson, has compassion for her misfit characters without protecting them from the tragedies of existing in an unkind world. Not since Stafford's Molly Fawcett has a child's interiority been written so credibly. - Olivia Ascione D'Elia, St. Agnes