From Bookmarks Magazine
Reviewers were happy to celebrate Jesse Kellerman's ability to fuse the psychological novel with crime story conventions and produce something entirely original. They particularly enjoyed Joseph Geist's unreliability as a narrator; from the start, his neuroses and fixations guarantee that something awful will befall the man, but Kellerman allows the story to unfold at just the right pace to keep readers guessing exactly what. Critics also loved the unexpected ending, hinting that if what doesn't kill Geist doesn't exactly make him stronger, it at least helps him finally discover the meaning of free will.
From Booklist
Joseph Geist sees himself as a man of grand ideas. He clothes are tattered. He owns only a few books and a half bust of Nietzsche. But after eight years of study and professing, he’s bounced from Harvard’s Ph.D. program in philosophy, and a disagreement with his lover gets him bounced from her apartment. Broke and virtually homeless, he answers an ad in the Crimson for a “Conversationalist.” Six weeks after beginning his duties, Joseph is invited to move into the grand Victorian home of Alma, his brilliant, witty, and cultured employer-interlocutor. Joseph develops a deep respect and affection for the septuagenarian and, after much philosophical rumination, concludes that he’s never been happier. But his idyll soon becomes a nightmare. Kellerman’s novel is certainly character-driven, and Geist, the ascetic, intellectual student of free will, drives it—until it drives him. The philosopher is seduced by ease and soon succumbs to other less-than-noble emotions: covetousness, jealousy, panic, and hysteria. There’s a subtle but gnawing inevitability to this very closely observed, engaging portrait of an eternal sophomore. --Thomas Gaughan