Wonder Garden (Acompora) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Like Wharton, Acampora seems to understand fiction as a kind of elegant design. As characters reappear in one story after another, Acampora reveals herself as a careful architect...accomplishes great depth of characterization, in no small part because Acampora doesn’t shy from the unpalatable.... There is a barbed honesty to the stories that brushes up against Acam­pora’s lovely prose to interesting effect. Often a single sentence twists sinuously, charged with positive and negative electricity.
Alix Ohlin - New York Times Book Review


Acampora is a brilliant anthropologist of the suburbs.... [The Wonder Garden] is reminiscent of John Cheever in its anatomizing of suburban ennui and of Ann Beattie in its bemused dissection of a colorful cast of eccentrics. But Acampora’s is entirely her own book.... Acampora’s ability to lay bare the heartaches of complex individuals within an utterly unique imaginative world is worthy of high praise.
Boston Globe


Acampora’s stories show that an Anna Karenina principle still applies: All happy families are the same; the unhappy ones are miserable in their own special way. Or to boil it down to modern terms: mo’ money, mo’ problems.... Add well-drawn characters, interesting plots, cultural zingers and dead-on critiques of consumerism and Acampora delivers a page-turner.
Dallas Morning News


In 13 sharply drawn linked stories, Acampora reveals the complexities beneath the polish and privilege of a prosperous Connecticut town.
People


A smashing debut, with range, subtlety and bite. Reading Acampora, we’re in Cheever country, with hints of Flannery O’Connor.
Jane Ciabattari - BBC.com


(Starred review.) Acampora’s debut creates a portrait of a fictional upscale New York suburb, Old Cranbury, through a series of linked stories that are intelligent, unnerving, and very often strange…In each story, Acampora examines the tensions, longings, and mild lunacies.... [Wonder Garden] rendered in crisp prose and drawing on extensive architectural detail—is as irresistible as it is disturbing.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) The stories in Acampora’s first collection are so vivid, tightly plotted, and expertly woven that they make you look forward to reading more by this accomplished author.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Acampora wields prose with the precision of a scalpel, insightfully dissecting people’s desperate emotions and most cherished hopes.... Acampora not only meticulously conveys the allure of an outwardly paradisiacal suburban community...she also clearly captures the inner turmoil of its residents...the heartaches and delusions of American suburbanites.
Booklist


(Starred review.) Spooky and fabulous... A cleareyed lens into the strange, human wants of upper-class suburbia.
Kirkus Reviews