Silver’s luminous exploration of foundational relationships catastrophically altered by a gut-wrenching accident reveals the poignancy and vulnerability that underlie so many human contracts. Whether writing in the precociously gleeful voices of two guileless children or the increasingly jaded tones of damaged adults, Silver achieves a powerful and gripping authenticity that captures the confusion and, yes, the mystery of both innocence and maturity.

This exquisite gem of a novel digs deep into the longings of the human heart. Funny, compassionate, sorrowful, and tender, The Mysteries is an insightful and emotionally astute exploration of how love can both heal and fail us. I couldn't put it down, and I will be thinking about these characters for a very long time.

The Mysteries is character driven, and the reader will get wrapped up in each character’s purpose and the story’s theme. A definite keeper.

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Marisa Silver uses language as she would a sharp needle: to stitch, and to puncture, in her examination of people who are as vivid and anxious as the tragic souls of Richard Yates.

Silver faces the big mystery and the lesser, among them the mystery of personality, with her trademark clarity, her gorgeous sentences, to savor and underline, and her all-around brilliance.  A Silver novel is always cause for celebration.

...[the] chapters are written with a keen ear for the voices of children, filtered through the syntactic elegance that marks the entire book. In this way, language becomes character; Miggy and Ellen, as well as their parents, are embodied as much by what they think as by what happens to them.

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