Reviews

 

2007 John Gardner Fiction Book Award finalist "Svoboda's fiercely symbolic and brashly audacious allegory is a fanciful yet cautionary tale."—Booklist "In this book, god is not a solemn, dignified deity but a wisecracking woman with attention deficit disorder—the intentionally lower-case, working-class version of a supreme being. . . . Readers will find Svoboda’s perspective on God, faith, and the impulses that drive human behavior original and quirky. Her characters are self-absorbed buffoons at times but totally believable. This funny romp is very highly recommended for public libraries."—Library Journal “This new title from the University of Nebraska Press shimmers with crisp writing, an out-of-the ordinary story and unique characters." —Lincoln Journal Star "It's hard to spell out dreams—to rein them in, to make the story under our lives rise to the surface. Terese Svoboda brings a light hand, a pinch of humor and a lot of irreverence to this weighty task with her new novel, Tin God. . . . [T]he wisdom of Tin God lies in the idea that, in dreams, some people get within spitting distance of God, while others sleep the sleep of forgetting." —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times "Svoboda's fiction is marked by the same dark felicity of language found in her poetry. . . . A sense of urgency pervades all of her work, giving the words a pulse, making her language race with insistence."—Timothy Schaffert, Poets and Writers "Fabulous fabulist Svoboda (Trailer Girl) checks in to indulge a talent for wild, sketchy comedy. Laid in Willa Cather country, this quick take has some of Thomas Pynchon’s quirky Americana crossed with the Indian tales of Jaime de Angulo. . . . Back and forth the narrative moves, with Steinian The Making of Americans logic gluing together this eccentric vision of a God-driven Middle America. Svoboda loves her red-state mopes, and that warmth both illuminates and animates her eccentric prose."—Publishers Weekly “Tin God is a unique and thrilling ride through God’s country and the human imagination.”—Mariya Gusev, Literary Review "Tin God takes us on a wonderfully phantasmagoric and hilarious trip through the weird heart of the Midwest, a journey that passes across centuries and burrows into the unexplainable mysteries of what it means to be alive on this very strange planet. Terese Svoboda is a true American original: she writes with an angelic beauty and a devilish sense of humor."—Dan Chaon, author of Among the Missing and You Remind Me of Me “Terese Svoboda’s God—serenely positioned somewhere 'out of time, broadcasting whenever, a pretend imposter with no megaphones or ziggurats'—is as irreverent and off-handedly smart as only a deity can be. This is a funny, and moving, and dazzlingly written book.”—Jim Shepard, author of Nosferatu and Love and Hydrogen "Tin God is a brutal and beautiful book about being lost in new worlds and old ones, too. Terese Svoboda has once again proven herself a writer of real power and mystery."—Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land