S&M - Reviews

"We're concerned about the level of judgment that's been exercised by the people responsible for its publication…such materials are a violation of what most people in Iowa would find prudent."

-Representative Kenneth Veenstra, R-Orange City, Iowa

"S&M is an aggregation of small words like stones or shells which suggests a well-known territory: the place where we obsess over relationships."

-Stacey Levine, author of My Horse

"A stylistic and formal tour-de-force that manages at the same time to tell an enormously entertaining story about sex and loss and the quixotic self-deceiving pursuit of love."

-Jonathan Baumbach, author of Babble

"Here's a fluid plot shaped by a narrative voice both elegant and playful - always with an ear for the music of words - sliding the reader face first into both place and story, accompanied by interesting, provocative characters with lives shaped and complicated by the culture of the late 20th century. DeShell gives his characters the freedom to create themselves, create each other, and, in a way, re-create us as we read."

-Cris Mazza, author of Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?