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Outstanding
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Booklist Brad Hooper
A transcontinental--and breathtaking--thriller. [1 July 2006, p.6]
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
By the riveting climax, characters and readers alike recognize that the very concept of a fixed, static identity is a delusion. [15 May 2006, p.478]
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Outstanding
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Salon Laura Miller
This is how great fiction writing works, not by calling too much attention to itself, but by marshaling every word to the cause of making the characters and their story real.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Ron Charles
T. Coraghessan Boyle's new novel about identity theft is so perfectly aligned with the day's news that the FBI should search his house for stolen credit cards. Talk Talk grabs hold of the fragile structures that establish who we are and what we own and shakes them apart.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph
It is an unmistakeably literary production, and deals seriously with important themes, but it has all the vim and pace of a thriller by Elmore Leonard. It is seldom that I read a book of this length in a sitting, but I did this one.
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Outstanding
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The Economist
Riveting... Entertaining, headlong, and told with the sharp, droll and inventive prose one would expect from an author of this calibre, Talk Talk is a classic beach read - although you may not want to get sand in the crevices of so good a book.
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Outstanding
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The Guardian Carrie O'Grady
While it offers a few thrills in the stand-offs between victims and perp, as well as setting up interesting questions about modern-day identity, it is most gripping for the way it dives right into what it's like to be deaf.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph David Robson
The writing has real literary polish and the best set-pieces are superb, illuminating whole social worlds with skill and subtlety.
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Favorable
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USA Today Jacqueline Blais
An entertaining story with his usual laser commentary — about the way we identify ourselves and the role language plays.
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Favorable
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The Independent Tom Cox
The sentences sing and swagger, but Talk Talk feels a little thinly planted towards the end, with its creator seeming to rush towards his conclusion.
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Favorable
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The Independent James Urquhart
Boyle excels at exploring the peculiar vulnerabilities of the disenfranchised. Fired with adrenalin, Dana battles against the prejudices flung at her deafness and soured credit, giving Talk Talk a righteous zeal to spur on its pace.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Heller McAlpin
Talk Talk opens at full throttle and never slackens.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Will Blythe
A merely good novel.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
As Dana and Bridger hurtle across the country and the tension mounts, Boyle drops crumbs of wisdom in signature style, and readers will be hot on the trail.
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Favorable
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Bookslut Angela Stubbs
During the course of Talk Talk, whether it’s the inside of a jail cell or the back seat of a police car, Boyle makes the reader feel as if we’re right there experiencing every moment.
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Favorable
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Chicago Sun-Times Randy Michael Signor
Boyle's carefully cadenced sentences unwind in bursts of thought that almost tumble out of control, mimicking an unruly inner voice, bringing the reader inside the character's mind and heart.
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Mixed
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Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
But even though Boyle compares her to Captain Ahab, Dana just doesn't have enough obsessive energy to fire the later chapters, and the plot slows considerably by the time she, Bridger, and Peck make it to the East Coast. There it stalls out completely, leaving the reader with an ending that's abrupt and unsatisfying.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Ian Sansom
Everything is so flavoursome, everything painted in such vivid colours, there's such richness and zest -- like one of Peck's sauces -- that it's a disappointment when the inevitable confrontation occurs and there is, suddenly, satisfaction; no more suspense; no more curiosity; no more more. [8 July 2006]
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Mixed
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Boston Globe
For a book whose central conceit is the reclamation of identity, both Dana and Bridger are tentative, flat characters. It's not so much that Boyle fails to render them as fully formed people; it's more that they're believably uninteresting.
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Mixed
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The Onion A.V. Club Scott Tobias
Their conflict comes to an abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion, but Boyle's brisk pacing and typically delectable prose make even his letdowns seem improbably graceful.
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Mixed
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Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
In Talk Talk, when worlds at last collide, the smashup barely registers. Because for all their professed mutual antipathy, the Danas have no relationship, whether as people or as ideas, a narrative glitch that Boyle seems to realize only as he peels into his weirdly abrupt letdown of a finale.
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Mixed
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Sydney Morning Herald Rory Dufficy
It is hard to see how we are meant to relate Dana's shifting, unbalanced outward identity and the identity of a man whose outward identity is equally unstable, the result of caprice rather than construction.
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Unfavorable
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Atlantic Monthly Scott Prater
And under the made-for-TV script and lumbering prose lurks an essentially adolescent vision of male-female relations: women are enigmatic forces of nature that no man can hope to understand, let alone control.
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Funny, engaging and suspenseful, and sadly undermined by a forced, slap-dash ending that feels as if it had been grafted on at the last minute in a desperate effort to find some way of bringing this novel to a close.
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Unfavorable
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Library Journal Bette-Lee Fox
The continuity errors distracted this reviewer, and missing details make the novel more frustrating than riveting. [15 Apr 2006, p.64]
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