Praise for The Gin Closet

   Publishers’ Weekly:

   “Starred Review. Jamison's beautifully written debut follows independent young New Yorker Stella and her estranged aunt Tilly as they form    some version of a family… The relationship between Stella and Tilly is compelling…what truly drives the novel is Jamison's gorgeous prose.”

   Booklist:

   “First-time novelist Jamison portrays three generations of ‘wounded women’ in an exquisite blues of a novel…Narrating by turns in each lonely    woman’s voice, Jamison creates emotionally complex scenes of harsh revelation in language as scorching as gin…Jamison’s novel of solitary    confinement within one’s pain is hauntingly beautiful.”

   San Francisco Chronicle:

   "The Gin Closet is no escapist fantasy but a slow and steady heartbreak. It is also exquisitely beautiful. Jamison writes like a poet, her imagery    breathtaking, her sentences unfurling unpredictably, to the novel's devastating end… The Gin Closet is a classical tragedy. The characters are    doomed to repeat their mistakes, haunted by the past, unable to save themselves or each other. But while the plot precludes redemption,    language is a saving grace both for the novel and in their lives. We may not be able to change, but at least we can tell our stories, finding flashes   
   of beauty even in the ugliest things.”

   Buffalo News:

  “Life is raw in Leslie Jamison’s astonishing first novel, a story of love and ruin in the American West…it is a book that finds beauty in dysfunction    — and, in doing so, gives us one of the truest and most devastating depictions of alcoholism to be had in some time…The Gin Closet is nothing    short of a tour de force.”

   Vogue:

   A “keenly felt” exploration of “love’s more complex geometries.”

   New Haven Advocate:

   “Jamison's voice is resoundingly unique, her prose both raw and precise, fully attuned to poetry without ever rescinding an energetic narrative    impulse… Jamison trusts the consciousness of her characters and her readers. At the very points a lesser writer would stumble, lurch and turn    away, she stands still, stares and turns our faces to stare along with her… Of particular importance is the oblique beauty and taut sensuality of    Jamison's language and imagery… Jamison is not just marching to the beat of her own drum. She is banging out a brutal, ecstatic symphony
   upon it. The Gin Closet dares readers to understand how and why we abrade our bodies, ourselves, to manifest the incommunicable to one    another.”

   Time Out New York:

   “Jamison is no coward…she writes courageously about disease, sex and perils of the flesh without flinching… she’ll become a strong voice in    contemporary fiction.”

   Bookforum:

   “Deft portraits like this will make Jamison a voice to pay attention to in the years to come.”

   WETA Book Studio:

   “Leslie Jamison’s sentences are like electric shocks; her words are sharply defined razors, cutting a line across the heart. Her writing is sorrowful    and sexy; absurd and deliciously dark. The Gin Closet is an impressive debut novel.”