"A rollicking good read about the paradoxical nature of love and blood."
"Yoshimoto's words are considered, and each of them has the weigh of a small, perfectly round stone dropped into a still pool....In Tsugumi the author has created one of her most palpable and intriguing characters."
"There is no such thing as a stock character in Yoshimoto's fiction....[She] writes utterly without pretense."
"Bittersweet...buoyant...[Yoshimoto] shines like few contemporaries when writing about the sea.
"A vital portrait of a complicated friendship."