“Rhoda Lerman’s characters grapple with philosophy like lovers, and the result is a gothic novel of ideas with a plentitude of life to sustain its armature of scholarship. The language is gnomic and very fine, fiery and mysterious and attractive to those who remember Yeats and Blake, other visionaries with views of several worlds. The Book of The Night, if God sends it the select readership it deserves, should last this millennium.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A metamorphosis as provocative as any of Kafka’s is at the heart of this bizarre, sometimes prolix and portentous novel . . . a book filled with strange, rich effects unlike those in any other contemporary novel . . . it has stayed in my mind, and stimulated and bothered me, more than any other fiction I have read this year.”
—Bruce Allen The Chicago Tribune Bookworld
“Set in a monastery in the 10th –20th – century Iona simultaneously, but Lerman convinces, lures the reader inside . . . The work is well researched with a background of kabbala and linguistics, producing a style which would be self-indulgent were it not purposeful. (She is) an American writer of compelling talent.”
—The New Statesman
“How very much I enjoyed and admired your Book of The Night. What a fine ear you have. And what a fine mind.”
—Annie Dillard
“Rhoda Lerman has demonstrated — with much fun along the way—that it is still possible to write a clever, serious and technically innovative novel. . . Ms. Lerman’s interpretation of spiritual reaching forward we are all (know it or not) caught up in, is pointed clearly in the right direction: It is on the side of life. Moreover, because of the novelist’s never-flagging sense of irony and fun, her wonderfully provocative story is also a delight to read. With The Book of The Night, she takes her place beside Robert Graves, who also revives for us, with a tease and a smile, the mysteries of the pre-Christian and early Christian world.”
—Colin Walters The WashingtonTimes
“Rhoda Lerman creates in The Book of The Night a fantastic narrative voyage that is as unpredictable as an acid trip in which one’s imagination is the primary determinant of reality; it is replete with luscious detail and intriguing wordplay.”
—Valerie Miner The New York Times Book Review
“Here is a novel that proves American fiction is still powerfully alive.”
—Clarence Major
“It is a masterpiece because of its beautiful, joyous language and because of the coherence of its mythic point of view. The achievement ranks with those of Pound and Joyce, of Picasso and Stravinsky and Henry Moore, of all those works which meld the barbaric and the sophisticated.”
—Thomas A. Kuhlman Best Sellers
