M O R E P R A I S E
“[A] stunning debut novel, Cambridge native Shattuck renders the sad, comic decline of the Dunlap family, mirroring the demise of the Boston Brahmins themselves.”
—Greg Lalas, Boston Magazine
“Quiet … funny and moving.”
—Kristine Huntley, Booklist
“[With a] keen understanding of human nature and frailty [Shattuck] often displays a magnetic use of detail that not only makes her scenes come visually alive but also illuminates character.”
—David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle
“Shattuck’s prose is graceful and unforced, full of unexpected and casually tossed insights, and, like Lorrie Moore, her humor acts both as scourge and salve, to skewer and to deflect.”
—Nicola Smith, Valley News
“[The Hazards of Good Breeding] is at once a funny send-up of blue bloods in debauched decline and a profoundly compassionate contemplation of the burdens of inheritance.”
— Donna Seaman, Ruminator Review
“An excellent novel … The author avoids contrivance in presenting sensitive issues experienced by totally credible, thoughtful people and comes up with a new understanding of American life every bit as affecting as Richard Yates’s magnificent Revolutionary Road.”
— Ann Beattie
“Ms. Shattuck is a meticulous, probing story-teller, not unlike Richard Russo or John Irving…an impressive achievement.”
—WBAI
“It is Shattuck’s ongoing rich description of each character’s very different inner world, combined with her ability to take a sharp, amused, detached view of their attitudes and foibles that makes Hazards so pleasing.”
—Improper Bostonian
“The Hazards of Good Breeding heralds a talented new writer’s voice that is at once observant, funny, and graceful.”
— Rutland Herald and Times Argus
“With her sharp eye for detail and witty, winning prose, Jessica Shattuck takes the familiar story of a high-WASP family’s demise and turns it on its head. There are at least fifteen certifiable pleasures in every paragraph of this charming, intelligent, exceedingly well-crafted debut.”
— Helen Schulman
“With great skill and wisdom Jessica Shattuck weaves an intricate domestic web that highlights the most vulnerable threads in a myriad of relationships: parents, children, friends, and lovers. The Hazards of Good Breeding is all that the title promises and more. It is a terrific debut by a talented writer.”
— Jill McCorkle