Reviews

Take you downtown

Take You Downtown would make a terrific movie!

~CB

Lie to Me

LIE TO ME is another David Small gem. As in all his novels, everything rings true. This is a love story - and a family saga. It’s about what happens when you fall in love with someone whose family may or may not be in the mob. The writing is rich and absorbing, and the characters are flawed and redeemingly human. It’s deeply poignant, often hilarious, and filled with wonderful moments. A page-turner in the best sense in that you can’t help but care about the characters. LIE TO ME is first-rate fiction. Highly recommended for vacation reading.

~Andy Abramowitz, author Thank you, Goodnight.

more of everything

More of Everything may be a novel but is based on a deep understanding of life itself. The author touches the reader with every riveting page with real characters that we all know. It is so well written that the only disappointment is the novel must end. David Small did it again.

~William Costopoulos

I have read all of this author's books over the years, and this one finds him definitely at the top of his form. It's a familiar story--the narrator looking back on the people and events that shaped his life--but it's told with economy and sense of proportion that only comes from years of reflection. Small plunges into the action on page one and carries the reader along straight through to a satisfying and thoughtful ending. Not every book can make you smile, make you think, and keep you turning the pages, but this one does. Every reader will recognize their friends and families in his characters--and themselves as well. In terms of both length and style, it is easily his most accessible book, and it would serve as a good introduction to his other works.

~Neil Albert

This book is a gem. It explores themes of aging and the relationships we forge in the time we have. Like all of Small's novels, it's deep and insightful, rich in characters, with a story of a family that unfolds gradually and rewardingly. Alan, the protagonist, has been through a lot and is getting on in years, but refuses to pack it in. The book is a deep, insightful, sometimes chilling exploration of aging, but never morose or sentimental, and as usual, Small peppers his chapters with beautiful sentences that struck me as masterful but not showy. Highly recommend this one! Check out Almost Famous, Alone, and The River in Winter.

~Andy Abramowitz

I bought this book as a summer read and boy, was I ever surprised! I could not put this book down! The character development, and the story line of the characters lives was so believable that I felt like I became a part of the story itself. This book is a mixture of real life situations including humor, personal loss, both Good and bad life decisions, tragedy, and above all else a compelling love story between husband and wife. Buy this book. You will not be disappointed!

~RJT69

When I first began publishing my own fiction I happened upon the remarkable novel by David Small, Almost Famous, that remains one of the most astonishing works of fiction I've ever read! I have read everything I can get my hands on by this author. I don't think it's possible to read anything by David Small and not come away with new interpretations of grief and joy as well as a new knowledge of the depth of human emotion. His voice simultaneously humbles and enlightens me, and I am more grateful than I can express to have his prose in hand once again!

~Robb Forman Dew, author of Dale Love Sophie to Death (National Book Award) and other best-selling, critically acclaimed novels

Alone

David Small gives us a wonderful sense of slightly off-beat, but secretly desperate characters and what they say when they talk (or more often don’t) about love--- a rare combination of simplicity of vision and wonderfully vivid, even lyric description. It’s as though John Updike had tilled the fields left fallow by Raymond Carver.

~Susan Kennedy

Alone is a heartrending novel of exceptional power and grace.

~Hilma Wolitzer

The extravagant ways in which family members can damage themselves and each other is the theme of this tumultuous and moving novel by David Small.

~Linda Pastan

Alone is a superlative novel, vividly written, elegantly but unobtrusively structured, with an unfailing vein of rueful and sometimes extravagant humor that often intersects with, but never diminishes, the central tragedy.

~Michael Millgate

The River in Winter

I was mesmerized. From the first page it was like gripping the tail of a comet---the book goes with such speed, yet so deeply, into dark places of a man’s life and heart, places I’ve never been, and it greatly moved me. (I think Hemingway would have loved this book.)

~Nancy Thayer

Will long resonate in the reader’s conscience.

~Wright Morris

The River in Winter has the power of a violent fable. This is the death of the heart, American style.

~John Calvin Batchelor

Almost Famous

A splendid, compelling, often funny and moving novel that is filled with humanity and a true sense of life.

~Publishers Weekly

David Small offers a fully developed view of a complicated and absorbing character, a man deeply flawed but capable of change…. I won’t soon forget Almost Famous.

~Anne Tyler

A new classic.

~Robb Forman Dew

This is a real novel.

~Gail Godwin