“Bitter Milk will challenge many readers with its continuous narrative (no chapter breaks) and tricky parsing of a 9-year-old’s reality. But McManus has chosen not to offer up a glib version of a child’s tortured quest for truth. Rather, he burrows deep inside his character to create a fresh, unforgettable portrait that is both firmly rooted in its Appalachian setting and universal in its appeal.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Born on a Train, then, is not cheerful. But it is held together by the dogged determination of the author, who at once insists that this is what life is ‘like,’ and holds his vision together with a tightly controlled series of recurring images—of drugs and dead leaves and sorry dogs and shadows. This is a shadow world, the ‘dark’ side of America, and like a shadow you can’t get rid of it. That shadow glides out from all the church suppers and movies in mini-malls and houses with lawns and middle-class heterosexuals tucked up in bed watching the 11 o’clock news. All you have to do to find that world is take a look.” —Carolyn See, The Washington Post

“McManus’s consciousness flows not like a stream, but a flash flood. His characters all live on the ragged edge of physical and emotional crisis, often dulled by intoxication but always on the verge of a moment of clarity. McManus straps them into a screaming, circular drag toward nothingness in what seems like one long, breathless take.” —San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle [on Stop Breakin Down]