"The style is spare and poetic, story and reflection, moving ponderously, smoothly and touchingly back and forth across time."
Portland Book Review "Kim Stafford's moving memoir of loss and guilt about the suicide of his beloved brother, Bret, at age forty is brilliantly conceived and fascinatingly written."
World Literature Today "Stafford's story cannot conjure up his brother's return ... Read moreto life, but it does perform the magic of memoir. Even when there are gaps that cannot be filled, voids that cannot be crossed, the act of telling the story can provide the 'episodic evidence' that leans 'toward understanding' and holds the broken self together."
Western American Literature "The epigraph of 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do is a line of Stafford's father: 'Why tell what hurts?' This exquisite book is Kim Stafford's answer. It's difficult to tell what hurts, he explains, but 'the darkest things hurt more when they are not told.'"
The Seattle Times "Then, after so many years unable to work it all out, the encouragement of a new friend led to the remembering. And remembering led to the writing of this beautiful and brave story
a story in which Kim Stafford put his arm around his brother, once again. And as they walked together, everything was OK."
The Eugene Register-Guard Show Less