Publishers Marketplace: Joshua Kornreich

"In a language all his own, a language driven by stutterance and repetition, Joshua Kornreich evokes and seduces the reader into a boyhood mythography where things are not what they always seem to be. At the center of this world stands Kornreich’s boy, a hypersensitive kid whose eyes and ears are struggling to make sense of a world fissured by his parents' marital unrest and his own invisible place in that familial world. What Kornreich’s boy-narrator is fascinated with most compulsively – the household dustbuster, the backyard tree, the bushes that separate one backyard from another, not to mention the mysterious brown residue that resides at the bottom of the deep end of the family’s backyard pool – is also the source of his most startling revelations. A first novel unlike any other, THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is a book of lingual daring and domestic disturbance that belongs on the shelf next to Gordon Lish’s PERU, not only for the singular way that it deals with the subject matter of childhood violence, but also for the sheer force and torque of its sentences."
--Marick Press editorial

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS teaches us how to see afresh how sentences look and function on the page, isolating their sparse beauty, floating each in a small sea of white space, making each tentative, always ready to try a new version of itself, making each as obsessive about itself as the unhinged Oedipal narrator is about himself, about his universe of childhood secrets, fears, trespasses, violence, voyeurism, a frightening father, an ineffectual mother, a bevy of bullying boys, a houseful of haunting revelations. Tight, clean, spare, this is the real deal."
--Lance Olsen, author of NIETZCHE'S KISSES and ANXIOUS PLEASURES

"Through the force of his language, his calculated repetitions, and the precision of his images, Joshua Kornreich fully evokes and fully seduces us into a childhood geography where things are not always what they appear to be. THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is a book that belongs on the shelf next to Gordon Lish's PERU, both for the way it deals with its subject matter and for the torque of its sentences."
--Peter Markus, author of GOOD, BROTHER and THE SINGING FISH

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is stunningly original – a tour-de-force of language as well as a moving story of a shattered childhood. Joshua Kornreich is immensely talented. Keep your eye on this author!"
--Masha Hamilton, author of THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE and THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US

"Truly close to a unique writing style...Kornreich's novel is about a young boy whose parents are divorcing, his father is referred to as Frosty the Blowman, and he (the son) goes through a pretty traumatic afternoon. And Kornreich is able to solidly get in the head of a young boy and force the reader to see EVERYthing through his eyes. It's a fascinating work. 5.0 [out of 5.0] stars."
--Emerging Writers Network

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is one of the most refreshing novels I have read all year. The story of one afternoon in eight year-old boy's life is told poetically through the voice of the child. Joshua Kornreich's stream of consciousness style captures the innocence and vulnerability of its subject well, and his spare sentences and paragraphs add to the book's undeniable charm."
--Largehearted Boy - Book Notes series

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is very much its own creature, and the reader who chooses to follow the story of Kornreich's Boy will not regret the decision. Much of the pleasure in reading THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS does indeed come from the use of the language itself; once adjusted to the rhythm and flow of Kornreich's isolated sentences, the reader may find it difficult to imagine the Boy's story told any other way. Yet beneath his public image as a linguistic trailblazer, Kornreich proves himself to be a fine storyteller: outrageous and bizarre, certainly, but also subtle, perceptive and sensitive enough to win the reader’s heart."
--Meridian