Failure To Zigzag. Jane Vandenburgh

      “Like it or not, we are part of the

       crappy shit of our own families.

       I mean that in the kindest way.”

      —Katrinka Ainsworth in Failure to Zigzag

      “Brilliant. . . . A startlingly idiosyncratic, intelligent, funny, and painfully moving novel.”

      —Publishers Weekly

      “Jane Vandenburgh’s Failure to Zigzag is a remarkable first novel. From beginning to end, it’s written with great authority—there are no false steps here, no feeble gestures toward what other people might consider good writing. The dark material is treated entirely without melodrama or sentimentality; humor, if anything, is the prevailing tone, though it is an earned, wise humor, not a wise-cracking, mocking kind. And the mother, Katrinka Ainsworth, is one of the great characters of modern American fiction.”

      —Wendy Lesser, Editor, The Threepenny Review

      “Rarely has a first novel so beautifully communicated the wild intelligence and despair of the insane as Vandenburgh’s exquisite Failure to Zigzag.”

       —San Francisco Chronicle

      “An important novel.”

       —The Wall Street Journal

      “A stunning debut. . . . An uncompromisingly tragic novel about a teenaged girl whose mother is mad.”

       —Oakland Tribune

      “Almost perfect . . . Vandenburgh reveals not only her understanding of the extremes of human behavior but her prodigious facility with precise, witty language. Her characters convince us again of how we sometimes find the courage to feel other people’s pain and forgive our own.”

       —Chicago Tribune

      “Vandenburgh is a most accomplished writer . . . and she has a highly developed sense of the subtleties and nuances of human behavior.”

       —Washington Post

      “Zigzag is one of those rare books in which you identify so closely with the characters that their craziness seems like a higher form of sanity.”

       —Berkeley Voice

      “This is no book for a lazy reader. It’s a mental jigsaw puzzle: You piece the frame together fast enough, but those crooked pieces in the middle take some work. Keep at it, though, and the whole picture comes clear.”

       —The Philadelphia Inquirer

      “Comical, imaginative, and excruciatingly observant. As you read this book, you uncover another layer of meaning—that writers, too, hear voices. Jane Vandenburgh listens well.”

       —Belles Lettres