The Bitter Half - Reviews

"Of all the writers of his postmod generation, Toby Olson is the most forgiving. Even when writing of the most mundane acts-performing in a backwoods porn show, for example, or inaugurating an outhouse-he grants all his characters the full wonder and mystery of their lives, and strokes language as a lover might the flesh of his beloved."

—Robert Coover

"At every turn Olson reminds his reader how information inevitably recovers ambiguity, how the tidiest sense of remembered history and constructed plot are more journeys into accident and chance, how everyday lives must play out against and amid the luminous, albeit clumsy, mystery of attraction and want. The language, as always with Olson, is broad, adamant, and stunning, this text a conjured place fit for extended habitation."

—Review of Contemporary Fiction