"There hasn't been another American writer of Joan Didion's quality since Nathanael West.... [She has] a vision as bleak and precise as Eliot's." --John Leonard, The New York Times"A slant of vision that is arresting and unique . . . Didion might be an observer from another planet--one so edgy and alert that she ends up knowing more about our own world than we know ourselves." --Anne Tyler, New Republic"A beautifully told first novel . . . written in prose both witty and imaginative." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)