After bringing Miriam Toews’ novel A Complicated Kindness to American readers, her U.S. publisher, Counterpoint, has now reissued her first two novels, The Summer of My Amazing Luck and A Boy of Good Breeding, and has scored an admiring joint review in the New York Times Book Review. Says reviewer Gregory Cowles: “Although less substantial than her later work — in some ways, these gangly novels represent the awkward childhood of Toews’s career — they still display the generous wit and effervescence that make her so companionable a storyteller.”

However, since we here at Quillblog are great fans of comic novels, we aren’t quite sure how we feel about the opening shot of Cowles’ review: “Funny writers sometimes face the same problem as photographers who take pictures of kittens: though their work may be irresistible, few consider it art.” Er, “pictures of kittens”? Oh well, at least he didn’t say “paintings of dogs playing poker.”

Related links:
Click here for the New York Times review