Burning Down the House (Mendelsohn) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[T]he bitter horror of a Russian girl sold as a sex slave...can’t offset the flat main characters of the novel.... As the Zanes' world crumbles, the details are well-wrought in Mendelsohn's articulate voice, but the whole package never departs from the melodramatic.
Publishers Weekly


Mendelsohn had a New York Times best seller with I Was Amelia Earhart, and this work promises to be an eye-opener.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) [D]ramatic...incendiary.... With gorgeous, feverishly imaginative descriptions of her tormented character’s psyches...Mendelsohn, oracular, dazzling, and shocking, creates a maelstrom of tragic failings and crimes, exposing the global reach of the violent sex-trafficking underworld, and excoriating those among the "planetary elite" who allow it to metastasize. —Donna Seaman
Booklist


Mendelsohn tracks the slow and gruesome fall of an elite New York family caught up in the darker side of capitalism.... [T]he book gets its emotional heft from its supporting cast:... [Alix] may not be the heart of the novel, but she is its soul. A family saga about the grotesque underbelly of wealth.
Kirkus Reviews