Favorite Books of 2015: Magical realism is fun, but someone still has to clean up afterwards. Villoro's stories, always beleaguered but never brooding, sift soberly through the debris and extract an earthbound, workaday kind of enchantment.-- "The Believer on "The Guilty""
Top Book of 2015: The stories are sharp and hilarious and cut right through the (mostly) macho, male Mexican psyche. As a collection it is by turns entertaining and edifying and helped me understand our other closest neighboring country just a little bit better.-- "Publishing Perspectives on "The Guilty""
At last, an English translation brings his seriously funny take on identity to new audiences.-- "Los Angeles Review of Books on "The Guilty""
I have admired Juan Villoro ever since reading his stories in The Guilty. His new novel The Reef is even more impressive for a powerful, headlong narrative of sustained sleuthing and suspense and the inside-out of appearance and reality. This is the ultimate portrait of a sunny place with shady people, with reflections on Mexico "the land of impunity." Another Villoro triumph.--Paul Theroux
The first collection of Villoro's short stories to be translated into English depicts the complexity of contemporary Mexico in sharp, compelling prose. In tales with fascinating protagonists and tightly crafted action, Villoro eschews stereotypes and flips common perceptions of his homeland....Like his Mexican compatriots Valeria Luiselli and Enrique Vila-Matas as well as such U.S. writers as Kirstin Valdez Quade and Luis Alberto Urrea, Villoro rewards readers with refreshing, unforgettable stories.-- "Booklist on "The Guilty""
The writing is razor sharp, the satire brilliant and biting.... Villoro's English language debut presents seven expertly crafted stories that are funny and agile but also illuminating, exploring the paradox of being a Mexican in Mexico.-- "Three Percent on "The Guilty""
Villoro made me believe in the power of postmodernism to reflect back the multiple surfaces of our own highly constructed and often fictional lives. To do so while making the reader laugh out loud is no small feat.-- "Rain Taxi Review of Books on "The Guilty""
Villoro's point, punctuated by each of the stories in this powerful book, is that modern Mexico is finished, finally, trying to conform to outside notions of its tragedies....Villoro, a contemporary of Roberto Bolaño, offers a similar style and comic tone, and much to enjoy.-- "The New York Times Book Review on "The Guilty""
Villoro's writing, translated into English, is almost George Saundersesque: disarming, critical, and hilarious all at the same time. His writing is fueled mainly by the absurdity of the interpersonal, which largely decenters some of the macro things that an American audience might fetishize (the war on drugs, immigration, etc.), though those things are there too. The fact that The Guilty has been translated to English at all only adds to that decentering of the single story that American audiences have come to know about Mexico.-- "Ploughshares on "The Guilty""
The Reef is an overwhelming success, firmly solidifying [Villoro's] spot as a front-runner in contemporary Mexican literature.-- "Foreword Reviews"

Villoro mixes genres (noirish murder mystery, eco-thriller) to fashion a wickedly satirical romp of Mexico as a "country of enormous delusions." But that's not all. It's also a thoughtful tale of friendship and love.

A zesty tale that balances darkness and light with aplomb.

-- "Kirkus Review"

Villoro's satirical insight, delivered in free indirect style via the main character, in accompaniment to his languid progression through the world. Villoro skewers the hypocrisies of Mexican society, and especially the country's pathological relationship with the United States.

-- "The Times Literary Supplement"
A satirical look at tourism and an analogy for Mexico's place in global politics, The Reef is a mystery to watch out for.-- "BookRiot"
Mexican author Juan Villoro is playfully cynical, and in The Reef, tourism makes for an easy window into geopolitical satire.-- "GQ Magazine"
Villoro's sharp humor penetrates The Reef's overall melancholic, foggy tone with bursts of clarity that made me wonder why more of his work has not already been translated into English. His name has come up with Bolano's, though his voice is subtler, and he rewards the patient reader with a blend of empathy, ambivalence, and drollness.-- "The Brooklyn Rail"
The Reef is whip smart, an ebulliently satirical take on contemporary Mexico, growing older and having a past, and so much else. I love the relentless surprises embedded in the movement of Villoro's sentences. This writer's brain obviously moves very fast and his art lies in slowing his prose just enough to let us in on the spectacle.--Francisco Goldman