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This is a wonderful set of stories, full of empathy and wisdom.
San Jose Mercury News on How to Breathe Underwater
News: How To Breathe Underwater
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Beautiful, so wise and vital. . . . It’s impossible not to feel for the pained and alienated young women in Orringer’s stories, and impossible not to be stunned and moved by their quests for redemption. More so than any debut author in recent years, Orringer proves that the kids are all right, even when they’re not.
The Austin Chronicle on How to Breathe Underwater
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Utterly authentic . . . the passage through childhood and puberty is strewn with dangers and roadblocks. But what [Orringer] does with those hazards in her stories is something altogether magical.
The Seattle Times on How to Breathe Underwater
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Eloquent….Orringer sifts the inexorable sparks of sexual awakening and unearths moments of brittle surprise and bitter triumph…Haunting.
Miami Herald on How to Breathe Underwater
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Unclouded by sentimentality….Orringer endows her situations and her characters — adults as well as children — with complexity and humor….She writes with penetrating intelligence and remarkable self-possession.
The Boston Globe on How to Breathe Underwater
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How to Breathe Underwater is unbelievably good: the humiliations and cruelties and passions of childhood, sparkling fresh prose, a writer with a big heart and an acute sense of the small things that loom large in our lives.
Monica Ali, The Guardian on How to Breathe Underwater
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Absolutely magnificent…In Orringer’s world, we are forced to remember that time in our lives when we had to tolerate mystery and meaningless, because, to the child in each of us, the world is still a murky — and potentially magical place.
Ms. Magazine on How to Breathe Underwater