The people inhabiting these stories are fully in their complex lives, yet they’re rendered through a kind of hyper vivid language that makes their struggles seem hopeful just due to the great play of the words. What a rollickingly alive debut!

– Aimee Bender

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In Robert Glick’s bravura collection — in which, by way of ambiance, old-fashioned pencil sharpeners seem to turn in character’s stomachs and four-pound postage scales are set to spin, by imagined overburden, upwards of 70 times — sad boys hide in trunks and covered jacuzzis, grandmothers rise from the dead and mermaids on matte silver pedestals have their heads taken off with chainsaws. Two Californias is a fizzing, crackling, nightmarish wonderfest. I was in from the dusty oaks in the first paragraph to the rattlesnake in the last.

– Laird Hunt

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Disturbing, tender, revelatory, and gorgeously expansive, Two Californias offers provocative pleasures even as it delivers us to the endless grief of desire, the bewildering repercussions of kindness, the terrible cost of unveiled devotion. Readers fierce enough to plunge to the depths of their own fears will be exhilarated by the emotional complexity, abiding humanity, and transcendent beauty of this eloquent collection.

– Melanie Rae Thon