REVIEWS
[UK] The Sunday Times: "there is a touch of dark Southern Gothic in Lawson's world, but it is lit by the sheer intelligence of her writing and her x-ray vision for the inner dynamics of relationships"
Irish Times: "Feelings stripped to the bone [...] a bell jar for a modern woman"
[UK] The Times Literary Supplement: "[Lawson's] prose is delivered with an arch of the eyebrow and an eerie emotional wind whistling through the air [...] strange and seductive"
New York Times: "confident [...] unnerving"
Los Angeles Times: "eminently readable [...] filled with heart and breath and life"
Neue Zurcher Zeitung [Switzerland]: "Lawson tells with an astonishing intensity, sometimes with downright painful empathy. This is the real literary sensation of this narrow storyteller"
Der Tagesspiegel [Germany]: "crystalline sentences"
Letras Libres [Spain]: "a fascinating book about sexual repression and its consequences"
NPR: "Against a background of suppressed passions and sublimation, 'Virgin And Other Stories' zeroes in on the hard-won, highly charged moments of awakening in these conflicted lives"
Publisher's Weekly [starred review]: "The precision of Lawson's prose brilliantly contrasts with the messy inner lives of her characters"
Huffington Post: "Lawson explores a moral grey area, uncovering new possibilities for truth"
The New Statesman [UK]: "Lawson's stories, at once forensic and mysterious, show how insistent our wants can be and how hard they are to understand"
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Lawson's palpable prose carries 'Virgin And Other Stories' and like any whirlwind love affair leaves us breathless and wanting more"
Seattle Times: "An intriguing start for a promising writer"
Electric Literature: "a redolent, troubling read, both emotionally penetrating and intellectually probing"
Cardiff Review [UK]: "What this collection shows, more than anything, is that no matter how deep the shadow of the Bible Belt runs, there can still bloom flowers of hope like the miracles the belt itself preaches"
Harvard Crimson: "Lawson's ability to compress character development is particularly impressive because the people themselves are so complex"
Literary Review [UK]: "studded with gems [...] a young writer to watch"
Charlotte Observer: "marks the beginning of an auspicious career"
Glasgow Review Of Books [UK]: "Sexy, Existential, Cool""
The Lonesome Reader [UK]: "It's difficult to write about desire in a way which feels wholly new, but that's something April Ayers Lawson does repeatedly in her debut book"
Entertainment Realm: "Best read slowly to savor and absorb the exquisite details"
Kirkus Review: "meaty, satisfying tales of a substance that suggests Lawson would make a fine novelist"
