A Little More Human:
L.A. Times: “Imagine a situation comedy written by Phillip K. Dick or a telenovela penned by Thomas Pynchon.”
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Washington Independent Review of Books: “A Little More Human, in its spiraling, fast-paced, witty prose, is stylistically reminiscent of the best of Vonnegut and Pynchon, and its humor, combined with an exploration and critique of technology, sets the story squarely in the realm of contemporary novels such as Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.”
Newsweek: “Fiona Maazel’s prose is delightfully quirky, insanely amusing and impossible to put down: Once again, she knocks it out of the park with a tale that pulls no punches and looks the borders of genre square in the eyes before tearing it all down.”
GQ: “Fiona Maazel collapses a whirlwind of genres into a tragicomic tromp through memory and mind.”
Book Riot: “Fantastic. I loved it. This is an HBO series I really want to watch.”
Columbia Journal: “But while anxiety is a difficult disorder necessitating treatment, the kind of questioning in Maazel’s book can be incredibly valuable in other contexts, which is why her work is important art. Great art. Necessary art, even, during a time in America when ignoring actual large problems through evasion has led to gross and irresponsible political failures.”
“Listen, skip the blurbs and just buy the damn book. Fiona Maazel is one of the funniest and finest we’ve got.”
– Sam Lipsyte, author of The Fun Parts
“Maazel is a brilliant acrobat, leading a reader to unimagined sights with humor, wonder, and vibrant intelligence. Surefooted and powerful as DeLillo, Maazel lands it perfectly every time.”
– Samantha Hunt, author of Mr. Splitfoot
“Fiona Maazel is an explorer, a risk-taker, a mad scientist an artist, in other words and A Little More Human is her most brilliant and uncompromising novel yet. Take this book home and read it right away, preferably in your superhero suit.”
– John Wray, author of The Lost Time Accidents
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Reviews for Woke Up Lonely: They’re pretty good!
A New York Times Notable Book of 2013.
A Kansas City Star Best Book of 2013.
BookBrowse: “I would go anywhere with Maazel. Whether you’re as enchanted by her language as I am or not (though I promise, she will enchant you), Woke Up Lonely is a spectacular novel. You must read it.
Book of the week at Oprah.com: “Maazel’s insights are as sound as her imagination is wild.”
The New York Times: “Maazel spins between the spooky midnight frequency of V. and the bizarro humor of White Noise.”
The Boston Globe: “Uniformly entertaining…It’s thrilling to imagine what Fiona Maazel might do next.”
Marie Claire: “It’s as if a Paul Thomas Anderson movie married a David Foster Wallace novel and had a baby. Which is to say, this story is weird, thrilling, and inimitable.”
The Chicago Tribune: “Fiona Maazel possesses a formidable imagination and considerable linguistic virtuosity.”
San Diego CityBeat: “The most charismatic figure here is Maazel, whose rich prose is veined with wit and wisdom. Though diabolically entertaining, she’s a writer with something to say.”
The Minneapolis Star Tribune: “A bold, outsized work that never fails to entertain.”
USA Today: “The talented Maazel has plenty of imagination.”
The Observer: “…a madcap, darkly comic tale.”
The Millions: “…One of the best pieces of fiction and social satire of the year.”
NPR: “Woke Up Lonely is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, filled with swerves and contradictions.”
LA Review of Books: “Woke Up Lonely is a book that understands who we are today.”
The Daily Beast: “Maazel has a real talent for taking these existential millstones of modern life—fear of death, failure, being alone, everything—and filtering them into morbidly funny, troublingly familiar forms.”
Electric Literature: “Fiona Maazel’s new novel, Woke Up Lonely, is a howl—melancholy and resonant, consistently pitched but too wild and haunting to be described as one-note.”
Book Forum: “…a deeply felt and wildly original novel…that won’t be soon forgotten.”
The Rumpus: “Maazel is a master sentence-maker and has a black sense of humor that makes for an addictive reading experience.”
The Huffington Post featured the novel—the novel they’re talking about—here.
Flavorwire picked it as a must-read for April here.
Cosmopolitan named it one of three must-reads for April. Vanity Fair included the novel in its Hot Type section.
Publishers Weekly: “At turns satiric and heartfelt, Maazel’s novel brims with energy and life.”
Kirkus Reviews: “Maazel manages to strike a number of tones here—from poignant…to paranoid—and she’s successful at every level.”
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Also, some writers have read the novel. They are nice people and had some nice things to say, including:
“Maazel is a great novelist and this is a great novel. Great, major, important—say it however you like. This is a book you need.”
– Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life
“Fiona Maazel’s new novel won’t take no for an answer—it grabbed me from page one and didn’t let me come up for air until the last page; I really think I may have bruised my ribs from laughing.”
– Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
“No one does loneliness, self-abasement, and dread like Fiona Maazel. And maybe no one other than George Saunders illuminates with as much sadness and comic brio the grotesqueness of the extent to which we fall short—as citizens, as family members, and as individuals—of who we imagine ourselves to be.”
– Jim Shepard, author of You Think That’s Bad
“Fiona Maazel’s imagination is so wild—wild being an under-observed variety of honesty—that you feel like you’ve woken up into one of those rare novels as real as life. Hooray for such a talent!”
– Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
“Woke Up Lonely is the novel equivalent of a sonic boom—it builds, it explodes, it leaves your ears, mind, and soul ringing for days. Who else writes sentences like this, who else writes sound art prose that transports a heart-killing story of human frailty, susceptibility, loyalty, and isolation? No one.”
– Heidi Julavits, author of The Vanishers
“Ignore Fiona Maazel at your peril. Woke Up Lonely is just as pithy, whimsical, and brilliant as her first novel, Last Last Chance. She writes about loneliness in a way that makes you feel less lonely: a wild, hilarious ride that highlight’s Maazel’s uncanny knack for avoiding the obvious.”
– Wesley Stace, author of Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer
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As for Last Last Chance:
“Moving, buoyant, and utterly true. . . . Funny, lacerating prose. . . . Maazel is such a fine, precise writer, she can convince the reader of almost anything.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Maazel writes with a kind of ecstatic swagger–freewheeling and cocksure, intelligent and loopy and funny as hell. . . . I relished every page.”
—Slate
“Marvelous. . . . Incorrigibly, unnervingly, heartbreakingly funny. . . . [Maazel] has pulled off a remarkable feat of the imagination.”
—The Chicago Tribune
“Read this book for the sentence-by-sentence brilliance of Maazel’s inimitable voice.”
—Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End