Good on Paper (Cantor) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Ms. Cantor is unafraid of asking big questions explicitly, like whether fidelity—to texts or to people—is possible. The complicated details of Romei's schemes and Shira's past start to pile up and will satisfy lovers of plot, but the novel is at its strongest when Shira's voice is loosely playful and ruminative.
John Williams - New York Times Book Review


Ms. Cantor ingeniously matches the dilemmas of poetics to personal matters..... In the novel’s final third, [her] deft juggling act collapses....and the book flattens into a soap opera. Good on Paper tantalizingly tinkers with storytelling novelties, but it ends up in old and familiar territory.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


It is not often that a novel comes along that is laugh-out-loud hilarious and thought-provokingly philosophical. Good on Paper is both.
Boston Globe


The comedy helps prevent the seriousness from shading into sentimentality. But what remains most powerful about this book is not the zaniness or the punning. Rather, it is how sincerely Cantor depicts what another poet, Wallace Stevens, called "This vif, this dizzle-dazzle of being new/ And of becoming."
San Francisco Chronicle


Rachel Cantor's debut...introduced her as an imaginative tour de force able to juggle the absurd with the poignant, the unbelievable with the necessary. With Good on Paper, Cantor does the same, and with just as much dexterity.
Toronto Star


An engrossing read and an invigorating subject of study.... Ultimately, this is a story about stories, about the power of art to redeem both creator and viewer.
Dallas Morning News


In this madcap novel...nothing is quite as it seems.... Good on Paper is well-suited to our global world: set in New York, with plot threads in Rome. Though at times a bit too tied to textual analysis of Dante's work, and a little too taken with wordplay, there is an absorbing story here, and affectionate character development.
Minneapolis Star Tribuneac


In Good on Paper, Cantor creates a compelling vision of what love is. It's not a feeling but —like translation—an act: a willful opening of one self to another.
NPR


As Cantor's playful and smart novel unfolds, it's hard not to fall in love with her characters. Above all, it's a book for language-lovers, so heads-up word fiends.
Elle


A dazzling book...With one-of-a-kind characters and brilliant insights on translation, this book will hit you in all your literary sweet spots.
Bustle


(Starred review.) Translation is a metaphor through which Cantor uses her considerable powers with language to refract larger questions about family bonds, storytelling, and letting go of fantasies of new life and waking up to the life that is yours. (Jan.)
Publishers Weekly


[N]othing is straightforward—neither the work Shira is translating, nor her private affairs.... Yet as the tragedies and comedies of her experiences begin to blend in with Romei's book, the possibility of a vita nuova (new life) for herself and her daughter...seems real. —Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Cantor clearly loves her characters, and she shows true mastery of their inner lives. Between endearingly wonky riffs about translation, she offers full access to Shira's roller coaster of emotions.... You'll want to reread the final chapters more than once, delighted anew each time by how well Cantor speaks our language.
Kirkus Reviews