Olshan’s novels are novels of great obsessions, of transcendent moments of perfect love set against a backdrop of hovering betrayal and death.”
—The Guardian“I read the book a long time ago, but one thing has stayed with me: the way a trauma in childhood - though the memory is so blurred and disjointed - can affect us deeply without our even realizing it
— Kate Winslet, Oprah Magazine on The Waterline
“Beautiful, bittersweet. . .This fervent story of love and loss, of the perils and pleasures of intimacy, is depicted with a sure, light touch and with universal resonance and appeal.”
—The New York Times Book Review on Nightswimmer
“Joseph Olshan is clearly enormously talented. He has an almost extra-sensory understanding of the characters he writes about, and he writes magnificently well. He is funny, too.”
—The Telegraph (London)
“Extraordinarily mature. Here is a writer in full command of his narrative.”
—Ian McEwan on Clara’s Heart
“Joseph Olshan has stepped up and hit one for the home team. The bracing clarity of his prose. . .observes the destructive impact killings have on an isolated region.”
—The New York Times Book Review on Cloudland
“Joseph Olshan finds great souls where no one else would think to look for them.”
—The Observer (London)
“Olshan writes prose that sings.”
—The Los Angeles Times
"A finely written and compassionate book. Its quality is immediately apparent. For all that the novel is poignantly accurate on contemporary social nuance, none of Olshan’s characters have that two-dimensional quality that afflicts characters plagiarized from real life. All of them ring with an imaginative reality only available to a writer who does his field research among the images of his own thoughts. It is a novel characterized by poetic instinct rather than documentary panache."
—The Sunday Times (London) on The Waterline
“With the singularly tender humor that pervades his fiction, Olshan demonstrates that the youth we worship is full of the pain we have forgotten.”
— Chicago Tribune
The book is unputdownable. . . .Joseph Olshan is a born story-teller. His emotional instincts are so acute that at every important moment he strikes the right note. And his understanding of the natural juxtaposition of the tragic and the commonplace is faultless. It is this instinct for emotional truth that makes bestsellers.”
—The Evening Standard (London) on The Waterline
“Joseph Olshan channels Andre Aciman in The Conversion, a vetiver-scented intrigue featuring a young American translator, a dead lover’s missing manuscript, and a crumbling Italian villa, all of which come to bear a stunning affirmation of art’s ability to ravage and redeem us.”
—Vogue
"A young American translator staying at an Italian novelist’s Tuscan villa recalls both his recently deceased boyfriend and a better-loved predecessor. Like a Henry James character, the American attempts to navigate European literary and political intrigue."
—The New York Times Book Review
“The novel sparks and glistens. We're really caught up in this tangle of love, honor, memory and future hopes. . . .Joseph Olshan puts us readers in a world that's quite fascinating."
—National Public Radio (All Things Considered)
“The Conversion gives us the terrifically well-composed story of a young expatriate writer in France and Italy and his apprenticeship in art and life… Olshan's deeply passionate work flows along beautifully, always leading the reader onward and rewarding in the best ways a novel rewards: putting you in a world you never made but become convinced is yours to inhabit. And perhaps a place afterward to recall with balanced affection.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Olshan’s beautifully textured novel is steeped in the modernist search for meaning, with its resolutions ever receding. Good modernist that he is, Olshan has a sure handle on the literary tradition in which he locates himself, and its attendant thematic complexities. He has also woven an unerringly culturally accurate travel mystery that finds a respectable place in the subgenre of Jamesian international novels. It delights and engrosses the reader with a richness of detail, and through its crafting of a beguiling character in the seemingly unsentimental Marina, who demonstrates that "European" combination of practicality, calculation, wisdom, and inscrutability."
—The Boston Globe
Cloudland is a beautiful and original novel. Murder, darkness and snow – we immediately felt at home. The depth is painted with precise brushstrokes. The language is as light as snowflakes swirling across a frozen field. The characters are alive, constantly interesting and very cleverly drawn [especially the complicated relation between mother and daughter.] The murder mystery is deep and intricate. It was genuine and moving. As readers, we’d love to linger in this book, but the story forces us forward. This is true quality crime fiction.”
—Lars Kepler, New York Times bestselling author
“Evocative. . . the intricate whodunnit has faint echoes of Wilkie Collins with Catherine in the role of his ‘Woman In White,’ wandering desolate hills, but not trying nearly hard enough to escape her past.”
—The Boston Globe on Cloudland
“A fine writer.”
—The Washington Post on Cloudland
“Unlike the more common, adrenaline-fueled serial-killer thrillers, this is literary, character-driven fiction with remarkable empathy not only for those whom murder leaves behind but also for the perpetrator. Another fine performance from a critically acclaimed author.”
—Booklist on Cloudland
“Rarely do you find a story with characters so fully developed that you feel as if they might live next door. Conjuring a distinctly 19th-century atmosphere, Olshan excels at crafting a Dickensian literary piece.”
—Library Journal on Cloudland
“Blends fact, fiction, and page-turning suspense.”
—Entertainment Weekly on Black Diamond Fall
“A stunning literary thriller from critically acclaimed author Olshan, this one clearly demonstrating his mastery of the character-driven crime novel. As much an engrossing and rich examination of the consequences of desire as it is a painstakingly and sublimely constructed mystery.”
- Booklist (Starred Review) on Black Diamond Fall
"Joseph Olshan succeeds in crafting an enthralling mystery . . . a well-written, imaginatively construed mystery set in a wonderfully conjured up wintry Vermont college town. A thoroughly enjoyable five-star read.”
–New York Journal of Books on Black Diamond Fall
“A nuanced literary mystery...Readers will enjoy following the detectives as they uncover a link between the two crimes, but the real core of the book concerns the lies people tell each other and themselves.”
—Publishers Weekly on Black Diamond Fall
“A riveting mystery from a true master of the genre. . .very highly recommended.”
—Midwest Book Review
