"This book shot a lightning-bolt of understanding into my mind regarding the role of social media in the terrible political division racking our country. It also made me think that we make a grave error when we mistake the virtual world (of anonymity, cowardice, surficial snark, and posturing, one-dimensional, self-presentational bravado) for the real one – the one where people have to say things to one another’s faces, and are constrained, via the basic manners we are all pretty adept at learning, from being rude, dickish, or insulting."

"In Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ in the ’70s, the military government had thousands of activists and political opponents ‘disappeared.’ This novel is about a mother and father dealing with the disappearance of their son. It’s a moving book that also has a lot of dark comedy in it. For instance, the parents accept free nose jobs in exchange for a debt. It also captures the comic absurdity of the bureaucracy of a dictatorship. What’s most interesting to me is, as one character makes clear, the truth tellers in life are so often written off as crazy."