Brutal and magical and sexy as all hell. Dearman’s noir voice shatters boundaries I never knew existed.”
—Augusten Burroughs, New York Times best-selling author of Running With Scissors, Dry, and Magical Thinking
“A rich, noirish picture of olde New York with a punk sensibility that rocks the senses. Dearman’s characters are twisted, doomed, and filled with a lust for life.”
—Roberta Bayley, editor of Punk Magazine and author of Punk, Patti Smith, and Blank Generation Revisited
“Sapphically ardent, meta-absurd, and Nin-sexy all at once, Jill Dearman’s tale is a triumph of mysterious pleasures. Think of it as a Colette martini with a drop of Robbe-Grillet vermouth and a Jeanette Winterson olive.”
—Michael Atkinson, Village Voice and Movieline film critic, author of Hemingway Deadlights
“The Great Bravura straddles two worlds: her feet are firmly planted on earth, among a gritty ragtag group of early-20th century circus performers, while her hands reach for the stars, drawing the reader into a magical mystery realm where fantasy and sorcery are commonplace. Dearman builds on the tension created by the two milieus bumping into each other on the page to ultimately create a morality tale reminiscent of another era—the tragedies of ancient Greece.”
—Aaron Krach, artist, journalist, and author of Half-Life
