Seven Wives - Reviews

"...fraught with...charged moments that the narrative threatens to explode."

-The New York Times Book Review

"If the mind were to dwell for too long on the ambivalence of love and relationships, one could end up inhabiting the nightmare world of Baumbach's latest novel. Here, the libido is as dangerous as crack, and nothing that anyone says can be believed. Baumbach's protagonist is Jack, husband to the "seven wives" of the title, and the plot turns on all the love skeletons he has in his closet. Baumbach (Chez Charlotte and Emily, LJ 11/1/79) makes matters worse for him by painting the kinds of watery backdrops one finds in mandarin metafiction, e.g., cleverness-for-its-own-sake stuff. This is the opposite of historical fiction; Baumbach just grabs pieces of reality out of the pedestrian consciousness. His style lends itself well to settings of paranoid American noir, a miasma of sunglasses, pistols, and deadpan. For readers who enjoy that ilk, Baumbach delivers a nice, dark magic show."

-Brian Geary, Library Journal