Reviews and Praise for C. E. Poverman
Love by Drowning
“Deftly blending the lyricism of literary fiction…with the sparseness of noir, Poverman has fashioned an acutely intelligent psychological thriller that will keep readers as off-balance as his protagonist.”
—Library Journal
"I am not lying when I say this book is better than Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Poverman gives us a situation and set of characters as mysterious and intriguing as Flynn does, he surprises us just as much, and we are as riveted to the author's slow unraveling of the main players' psychologies. [...] What Poverman has done is both more skillful and more realistic: he's painted three-dimensional characters who are as likely to do right as they are to do wrong, characters whose obsessions and actions blur the line between good and evil, whose backgrounds and circumstances justify the havoc they wreak."
—Melanie Bishop for Huffington Post Books
“Love by Drowning, by C.E. Poverman, is the kind of novel you want to tuck into on that redeye across country, a psychological thriller you can fall into and will take you away into the night.”
—Rita Williams, Los Angeles Review of Books
“C.E. Poverman’s Love by Drowning is a wonderful novel. The first few pages will stun you (go ahead, read them now), and it never lets up.”
—Thomas Cobb, author of Crazy Heart and With Blood in Their Eyes
“In this powerful, beautifully written, and haunting novel, C.E. Poverman explores the murky and alluring waters where past and present merge, taking down life’s sailors as they fight for air and offering salvation when the storm subsides.”
—Deanne Stillman, author of Twentynine Palms and Desert Reckoning
“Magnificent in its conception and precisely detailed in its execution, Love by Drowning is a disquietingly obsessive psychological mystery…Poverman is a writer of such range and power…that at times the writing carries the force of myth.”
—Michael Collier, Director, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
On the Edge
“Has all the elements of classic noir…Poverman is a fine writer with a suitably brisk style and a good ear for courthouse jargon.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“C.E. Poverman’s gritty, utterly realistic On the Edge makes most suspense-mystery novels seem, by contrast, conventional and superficial. His portrait of a man in motion, attempting to keep his life from shattering even as he pursues an elusive “mystery” is memorable and exciting.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
Skin
“Skin is a smart and moving and immensely brave collection.”
—Francine Prose, author of The Turning and Blue Angel
“These involving, carefully crafted tales resonate of sexuality, relationships, and the tension between romance & love. Very highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred)
“Unsettling ambiguities characterize the determinist, chaotic, often violent world depicted in this powerful collection of 11 short stories by the author of My Father in Dreams.”
—Publishers Weekly
“These eleven stories by C.E. Poverman are astonishingly fine, and he is deserving of a wide readership. Chekhov’s stories suggest Poverman’s sensibility…His storytelling is wonderful.”
—Yale Alumni Magazine
My Father in Dreams
“This is a wonderful novel. It reminds me of the young Philip Roth…so intimate, generous, honest, complete. Things happen here. It’s amazing. Lives are lived.”
—Joy Williams, author of The Quick and the Dead (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
Solomon’s Daughter
“An extremely powerful book…staggeringly effective…”
—The New York Times Book Review
“The passages which break our heart are the very words which console."
—The Washington Post
“Poverman writes brilliantly of adolescents, of parents, of the way we all change and compromise and come to grips with reality. His story rings so true, is so skillfully drawn, and deals with so much that matters that readers may not be able to put it down.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The shadows left on a family by a daughter’s troubled adolescence are explored with great sympathy for all concerned in Solomon’s Daughter by C.E. Poverman.”
—Nancy Pearl, quoted in her book Book Lust
“This is a gripping, absolutely convincing, marvelous book, the best novel about American family life I’ve read.”
—Phyllis Rose, author of Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf
Susan
“This is a deft and captivating novel that succeeds as few first novels do.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“…a thorough, sensitive portrait of a woman.”
—The State (Columbia, SC)
Black Velvet Girl
“This collection of 13 short stories introduces a fresh, tart new talent with a mod note…Poverman’s eye is sharp, his imagination fertile, his mind full of unexpected quirks and depths, and his situations as up to date as tomorrow’s newspaper, yet as timeless as the verities.”
—Library Journal
“Poverman is among the best of the new fiction writers; the time to read him is now.”
—Robie Macaulery, Fiction Editor for Playboy
“Read C.E. Poverman—he writes great short stories. What he knows are people, fantasy, superb English, the poetry in prose, the secret jokes we wish we could have shared, and he has an imagination that stretches from there to here and back…”
—Bookletter
